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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27112270">25 Nights</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory'>ssrhpurgatory</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wolf 359 (Radio)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friends to Enemies to Lovers speedrun, Goddard Futuristics (Wolf 359), Lust, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Power Dynamics, Pre-Canon, hurt/comfort/hurt again, middle-aged characters</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:01:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>38,540</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27112270</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander Hilbert (90s alias Karl Kelley) has been lusting after his lab manager, Rosemary Epps, for the past two years. Rosemary might have a reputation as a cold-hearted bitch, but she’s been kind to him since the day he arrived at Goddard Futuristics, so he can’t quite bring himself to believe all the rumors he’s overheard about her. He knows he has no chance with her—she has a partner, after all—but a man can daydream, can’t he?</p><p>Or at least he can until an awkward confrontation facilitated by Rosemary’s erstwhile lover shatters all of Karl’s carefully held preconceptions about her. He finds himself furious at the way she has been playing on his emotions all along... but not quite furious enough to say no when she invites him into her bed and gives him leave to indulge in all of his fantasies.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alexander Hilbert/Original Female Character</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/21509380">Missives from the Black</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory">ssrhpurgatory</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I was filled by the urge to start re-writing bits of Missives from the Black, since it's technically a pile of short stories and also kind of an entire goddamn novel in a trench coat and could be more accurately tagged if broken out into its constituent sub-fics. Or it could if it weren't for the fact that the writing is almost three years old and in need of some updating. </p><p>I decided to start with the most complete section of the narrative, which runs from chapter 16 to chapter 21 of Missives, and is also known as the "two old people have an improbable amount of sex without throwing their backs out" fic. This will get chapters whenever I manage to re-write a chunk of narrative, but should finish up fairly quickly, since most of it is written already and it just needs, like, another 20k worth of office shenanigans and awkward flirting.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>November 22nd, 1990</em>
</p><p>The building was dark and empty, but Karl’s keycard still let him in to the lab complex. He had been invited to the company-hosted Thanksgiving celebration the other scientists in his lab put together each year, but the invitation had been offered without enthusiasm, and the thought of spending the day in a room full of people who did not seem to like him much as everyone socialized and over-ate did not appeal to him. Last year had been excruciatingly awkward, and a day spent in an empty lab working sounded… well. It sounded acceptable, if a bit lonely. And there was always more work to do.</p><p>He paused on the second floor landing and frowned. Light was pouring through the frosted glass window on the door between the hall and the stairs.</p><p>So, the lab was not as empty as he had expected it to be. Best to let whoever it was know that they were not alone, either. He was made of stern stuff, but even he had to admit that the giant, empty lab complex was creepy when all the lights were out, and the last thing anyone needed to do was to come across another person unexpectedly.</p><p>The latch on the door opened with an unexpectedly loud click, echoing in the silence of the building, and he found himself staring down the short hall that lead to the offices belonging to support staff. Rosemary was standing there at the end of the hall, framed by her wide-open office doorway and looking startled. She had appalling pair of bright yellow reading glasses perched on her nose and a stack of papers clutched to her chest, and her desk lamp and the overhead fluorescents were both on, overpowering the weak sunlight coming in the window behind her.</p><p>She recovered her composure before he did and smiled warmly down the hall at him in that way that always made his heart feel like it had stuttered and started again in his chest. “Hello, Dr. Kelley.”</p><p>“Er. Hello.” Karl stepped into the hall, glancing from side to side to make sure there were no other surprises down the side hallways, and let the door to the staircase fall shut behind him. It slammed shut and he winced at the noise, feeling his own awkwardness acutely. Bad enough that he found his lab manager uncomfortably attractive; his awareness that the two of them were probably the only two people in the building itched at him.</p><p>“You can take today off, you know,” Rosemary said conversationally, doing what she always did and easing a bit of his awkwardness. She was good at making it easy to pretend that all he wanted from her was friendship. “Even Pryce is. Well, under duress, I suppose, since it took Carter dragging her off to whatever the two of them get up to on Thanksgiving, but…” she trailed off, giving Karl a curious look. “You’ll be going to the scientists’ Thanksgiving, I’m sure?”</p><p>Karl tucked his arms behind his back and looked down at his feet. “Er. No, I thought I would get another observation cycle in. Perhaps finish that report on those bacterial cultures...”</p><p>“I see.” The tone of Rosemary’s voice made it clear that she did, in fact, see.</p><p>He looked up in time to catch a fleeting look of pity on Rosemary’s face. “You cannot take today off?”</p><p>Rosemary laughed at that. “I could, I suppose, but this is one of the few days a year I can really get the filing sorted out properly. No one interrupting me every few minutes with this problem or that, no meetings…”</p><p>“I see. I take it that is my cue to, ah, let you get on with it?”</p><p>“Mm,” she answered, along with a little nod, and he turned back to the stairs. “Dr. Kelley?”</p><p>“Hm?” He paused halfway through the door to the stairs and turned back towards her.</p><p>“Nothing much. Just wanted to let you know that if you get hungry, there’s food in the kitchenette fridge on this level.”</p><p>Karl made a face. “Not more of your tuna casserole, I hope?”</p><p>Rosemary laughed again. “Goodness, no. The cafeteria sent over a few, ah, Thanksgiving-inspired meals yesterday. Though whoever prepared them decided to get a little creative with the definition of a sandwich.”</p><p>“Oh?”</p><p>“Turkey, stuffing, gravy, and cranberry mayonnaise. On sweet rolls.”</p><p>Karl shuddered expressively. “I think I might prefer the tuna casserole.”</p><p>“Ah, well, man cannot survive on pecan pie alone.”</p><p>“Could try,” he shot back, before letting the door slam shut behind him as he escaped onto the stairwell. Rosemary’s laughter, warm and genuinely amused, followed him up the stairs.</p><p> </p><p>Rosemary sighed and stood up from her desk chair, stretching her arms over her head until her back popped. She’d discarded her jacket and ascot around noon, dumping both over the back of one of the spare chairs in her office before rolling up her sleeves and unbuttoning the top few buttons of her blouse. She always forgot exactly how active filing could be, and opening the window only helped the sweat situation so much; Florida was a swamp, after all, and even in November it wasn’t exactly cold out. Or at least not what she’d once considered cold; most native Floridians started walking around in puffy down jackets when it got down to this temperature. The building manager, a native Floridian himself, liked to keep the lab complex at a balmy 75 degrees all year around, and for the past half an hour Rosemary had been thinking with particular envy about the individual temperature controls the labs had.</p><p>She picked up the latest stack of reports she’d been sorting; nothing classified, nothing that belonged in the Black, but there were one or two things she thought she might need to run by Mr. Carter. All she could really do today was file them, though, so she kicked her heels off next to the desk and knelt to unlock the lowest drawer of the closest filing cabinet.</p><p>Of course, the lowest drawers on each of her filing cabinets always turned into catch-alls over the course of each quarter, so this maneuver revealed a whole new set of files to pull out and take a look at and make decisions about. Most of the files would go straight back into the drawer, so she didn’t bother moving them to her desk, but started arranging them on the floor instead, looking each file over and pulling out papers that needed to be shredded, making sure nothing was misfiled.</p><p>The sound of someone clearing his throat broke her concentration, and she looked up to see Dr. Kelley staring down at her with an expression of… well, she wasn’t quite sure. He was so reserved it was hard for her to read him most of the time, and she was normally very good at reading people.</p><p>She raised an inquisitive eyebrow at him, and he raised his hands defensively. “I did knock,” he said.</p><p>“Sorry. Was there something you wanted…?”</p><p>His hands were still up in front of him, and he waved them dismissively. “No, it is nothing important. I did not mean to disturb you.” He made as if to leave her office, but paused at the corner of her desk, facing away from her, his back very straight. “I was planning to eat lunch, and was wondering…” he trailed off, glancing over his shoulder at her.</p><p>Rosemary had, in fact, eaten one of the dreadful sandwiches several hours ago, but something about the tone of his voice gave her pause. She made a show of peeking at the clock on her desk. “Goodness, is that the time? Mind if I join you?”</p><p>The corners of his mouth twitched up slightly, the closest expression to a smile he ever made. “That would be nice,” he said. He came back around the desk and offered her a hand up, judiciously averting his gaze from her chest. She quickly did the open buttons on her blouse back up, then took his hand and hauled herself back to her feet. He didn’t let go of her right away; instead he steadied her by the elbow as she nudged her heels back upright and slipped back into them.</p><p>“What a gentleman.” She beamed her highest-wattage smile up at him, just to see how he’d react, and to her surprise he actually blushed. He dropped his grip on her arm as if she had burned him, and rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, his movements stiff and awkward.</p><p>Rosemary felt a bit guilty. She’d spent the past eight months doing exactly as Mr. Carter had requested: the other scientists in the lab still hadn’t warmed up to Dr. Kelley, so she’d been doing what she could to make sure he had some kind of friendly human contact every couple of days. And it had helped; when he’d gotten here, he would never have done something so sociable as asking someone to have lunch with him.</p><p>It was just a pity that she was the only person he seemed inclined to be sociable with.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Al watched Rosemary cross the parking lot outside of Goddard’s on-site apartment complex, waiting for her to properly pay attention to her surroundings and notice him. It took her much longer than it usually did; her face was locked in the corporate drone mask she wore so well, and it shouldn’t have been. Rosie was almost always chatty and relieved after she’d had a day alone to get her office in order, but this… this wasn’t her at all.</p><p>Then she looked up and caught sight of him, and a brilliant smile changed her face entirely. “Al! I thought you said you weren’t going to be able to make it this year.”</p><p>“I’m technically on a business trip,” he said, grinning back. “Just enough time to make a flying visit and bring you Chinese food.” He held up a paper bag. “You still like beef and broccoli, right?”</p><p>Rosie nodded and used her keycard on the front door of the apartment complex. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, her voice tight with… something. Al frowned and followed her to her apartment, down at the end of the first floor. Rosie normally kept her emotions close to her chest, so if he could hear that something was off… She unlocked her apartment door and waved him in. “Put that down in the kitchen and take your pants off.”</p><p>Al’s eyebrows flew upwards in amusement. “Well now, darlin’, if I’d known that’s all you’d want from me, I’d have eaten before you got here.”</p><p>Rosie gave him a guilty look. “Sorry. Though you did say it was a flying visit. Ten minutes enough time to feed yourself?”</p><p>“Plenty,” he said. He reached out and chucked her gently under the chin. “What’s got in to you today that’s got you all het up, Miss Rosie?”</p><p>Rosie shrugged and glanced off to the side. “Just one of those days, I suppose. Things got a bit… off track.” She followed him into the kitchen, watching as he pulled the cartons of food out of the bag and laid them out on the little round table in the center of the kitchen. Rosie handed him a fork, and he sat down, popped open a container of rice and another of sesame chicken, and started eating.</p><p>He gestured expansively at the remaining containers with his fork. “You’re not hungry?”</p><p>“I had a second lunch,” she said, gathering up her share of the Chinese food and stuffing the containers in her fridge.</p><p>“Well, now, that is unusual.”</p><p>Rosie opened her mouth, then shut it again, exhaling noisily through her nose. Al studied her face; something was definitely bothering her. After a moment she spoke. “I had company in the lab today.”</p><p>Al ran down the mental list of people who might have this effect on Rosie. “Don’t tell me Pryce was breathing down your neck all day.”</p><p>Rosie laughed at that. “No, not Pryce. Dr. Kelley.” At Al’s blank look, she added “The Russian.”</p><p>Al frowned, and stabbed another piece of sesame chicken, gesturing at Rosie with the loaded fork. “I thought you liked the Russian.”</p><p>Rosie sighed. “I pity the Russian. There’s a distinct difference.”</p><p>“Is that all?” Rosie gave him an inquisitive look, but Al deliberately took another bite of his food, chewing as slowly as possible and watching her expression turn irritated.</p><p>“I really don’t know what you mean,” she said, punctuating her words with an annoyed huff. “Eat faster.”</p><p>Al considered pushing the issue, but if Rosie didn’t want to talk about whatever was bothering her, she just wouldn’t, and no amount of pushing would get her to. “Why don’t you go get ready for me?” He asked instead. “Go and take your hair off.”</p><p>Rosie raised an eyebrow at him. “And the suit too?”</p><p>“Naw. You know how much I enjoy undressing you.”</p><p>Rosie smirked. “Fine, but I’m taking the pantyhose off. You always wind up snagging them.”</p><p>“Says the woman who keeps ripping the buttons off my shirts,” he called after her as she headed towards the bedroom. He grinned and turned back to his food, wolfing it down.</p><p>After all, he couldn’t keep Miss Rosie waiting.</p><p> </p><p>Karl was in trouble.</p><p>It wasn’t the sort of trouble he was used to; there were no party thugs breathing down his neck, no superiors threatening his imminent demise if he didn’t toe the line.</p><p>No, he was in trouble because he had walked into Rosemary’s office and had found her kneeling on the floor, her prim little blouse unbuttoned enough to expose a truly vast amount of cleavage, and the first thought through his head had been “I wonder what she’d look like with her lips around my cock.”</p><p>It was just that he had not expected it, that was all. It had to be a side effect of how lonely he had been since… well, he would say since he arrived in America, but he had been lonely long before that. And he had been whisked off from his lonely job in a lonely lab and dumped down here, and Rosemary…</p><p>He suspected he would be half in love with anyone who went out of their way to be kind to him at this point. It was the lust that was really surprising.</p><p>Or maybe not so very surprising, when their apartments—their bedrooms—shared a wall. He knew a little too much about how Rosemary sounded in the throes of ecstasy for his own comfort, and he would be lying if he said he had not ever laid in bed listening and fantasizing about taking the place of whoever was making her scream.</p><p>It had only been once.</p><p>Well, maybe twice.</p><p>Karl knew it was a hopeless infatuation. She had a partner. Al Bennett, a handsome man who bore the title Head of Security and who almost never seemed to be actually present on Goddard’s campus. Karl had heard the man’s voice through the wall more than once, no words, just a deep voice, goading Rosemary on, gentling her after, and leaving Rosemary’s apartment the instant they were done with their business together. But Al’s disinterest in remaining at Rosemary’s side did not change the fact of his existence, and even without the competition, Karl suspected that he would have little luck with Rosemary on the strength of his own merits, what few there were.</p><p>Still… still. He could not get the image of Rosemary kneeling at his feet like that out of his head. He could not forget the way she had smiled at him, the way she had teased him during lunch; he had, in fact, resorted to pecan pie and nothing else because the sandwiches had just been too strange for him to do anything but pick at them. She had laughed at him, not unkindly, and had cajoled him into laughing with her… and for a little while he had forgotten to be lonely.</p><p>So maybe that was why, when he finished writing up the day’s work and headed back to the apartment complex, he found himself passing the door of his own apartment and knocking on hers.</p><p>He heard an exchange of voices inside, and took a step back—he had not expected Rosemary to have company—but it was too late. The door swung open. A ginger-haired giant of a man—Al, who Karl had thought safely on the other side of the country—filled the doorway, wearing trousers and a partly unbuttoned dress shirt with… yes, that was a smear of Rosemary’s red lipstick at the collar, wasn’t it. Karl took another step back. “Ah, I did not realize Rosemary had company…”</p><p>Al’s face lit up with amusement. “Naw, I’m on my way out soon anyway. Come on in.”</p><p>Without quite knowing how it had happened—he thought he had been a respectable distance away from the apartment door—Karl found himself propelled through the doorway of Rosemary’s apartment and down the little hall into the living room. Rosemary’s apartment was an exact mirror of his, the same couch and two armchairs and side tables occupying her living room. The side tables and both armchairs were strewn with piles of paper, stapled stacks of journal articles covered in highlighter marks and scribbled notes. “Sit yourself down and make yourself comfortable,” Al said, his southern drawl friendly as he gestured at the couch. He knocked on what must be the bedroom door in this apartment. “You’ve got company, Miss Rosie.”</p><p>Karl settled himself carefully on the middle of the sofa—both of the arms looked like they were in imminent peril of paper avalanches from the side tables—and heard Rosemary respond with a muffled “Is it someone I need to put my hair on for?” through the bedroom door.</p><p>Al turned and looked Karl up and down, then responded with “He didn’t put his hair on for you, so I can’t see why you’d bother.”</p><p>There was a long moment of silence from inside the bedroom, then he heard Rosemary’s voice again. “I’ll be out in a minute.”</p><p>Al crossed the room and perched himself on the arm of the least-perilous looking armchair. “So you’re her Dr. Kelley, then.”</p><p>Karl tried and failed to suppress a startled look. Everyone in the company knew who Al was, but he had not expected to be known in return. “She has, ah, spoken about me?”</p><p>Al gave Karl another assessing look. “It’s more what she hasn’t said.”</p><p>Karl frowned, bristling a bit. “What does that mean?”</p><p>Al laughed, nonplussed, and leaned forward conspiratorially, his voice dropping to something just above a whisper. “I think you’ll do nicely. The real question is whether you’ll catch her if I give her a shove in the right direction before I go.”</p><p>Karl stared at Al, baffled, but before he could even figure out what question to ask in response to that cryptic statement, the door of Rosemary’s bedroom opened and she bustled out, tying the belt on an oversized bright red terrycloth robe as she came. Her face was free of makeup and her form was less regimented than he was used to seeing. She could not possibly be wearing anything under that robe. Most surprising of all, her head was covered in a thin fuzz of hair, the dark brown he was used to seeing on her head diluted with gray.</p><p>“You wear a wig,” he blurted out.</p><p>Fortunately, Rosemary seemed more amused than insulted at this outburst. “Yes, I do.” Al had straightened up as Rosemary had entered the room, and she turned to him. “Flying visit over, then?”</p><p>“I’m afraid so, Rosie my darlin’,” Al drawled. “Walk me to the door?”</p><p>Rosemary nodded and followed Al to the door. He ducked into the kitchen along the way, coming out with a massive suit jacket slung over his shoulder, and bent down to kiss Rosemary on the cheek and say something quiet to her. Rosemary responded, and her response set off a tense, whispered conversation. Karl did his best to ignore it, and carefully extracted the top paper from one of the side tables.</p><p>Escaping was out of the question right now, so he might as well read.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Al bent down and bussed Rosemary lightly on the cheek. “I’ll be back for the Christmas party. See you then?”</p><p>“If I’ve forgiven you by then for letting a strange man into my apartment.”</p><p>Al glanced over Rosemary’s shoulder at the living room, then looked down at her, concerned. “I can kick him out before I go, if you’d like.”</p><p>Rosemary sighed. “It’s fine, Al. He’s… safe.”</p><p>“But you’re wishing he was a little bit less safe, aren’t you,” Al said blandly, studying her face with an uncomfortable intensity.</p><p>Rosemary huffed irritably. “I don’t sleep with people from my lab, Al.”</p><p>“Rosie, I’m going on another long trip next year.”</p><p>Rosemary tamped down a sudden surge of panic, keeping her face smooth and still. “How long this time?”</p><p>“Four months, at least. Maybe longer. And…” Al sighed. “I’d feel better, you know. If you had someone here. It’s been more than two years since Charlotte transferred, and you’ve been making do with my spare minutes.”</p><p>“I don’t need sex,” Rosemary protested. Al raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I don’t.”</p><p>“Maybe not, but you need someone to remind you that you’re a human being every once in a while.” Al cupped her cheek with his free hand, and she closed her eyes and leaned into it. He ran his thumb across her cheekbone, and she sighed.</p><p>“I’m going to miss you.”</p><p>“I know, Rosie.”</p><p>“You’re not going to miss me?”</p><p>“You know very well I miss you like hell. Even if you only use me for sex.”</p><p>“Especially because I only use you for sex, you mean.”</p><p>Al chuckled. “Well, there is that.” He swept Rosemary close in a one-armed hug, and she wrapped her arms around him, tucking her face against his chest. “One of these days I might not come back, Rosie. I’m not getting any younger, and the dangerous bits of what I do aren’t getting any easier.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>He released her, and nodded in the direction of the living room and Dr. Kelley. “So think about it.”</p><p>“Al…”</p><p>Al bent over to whisper in Rosemary’s ear. “Any man who’s willing to glare at me the way he did for the sin of existing in your apartment isn’t completely indifferent, Rosie.” Al straightened out and grinned down at her, then let himself out of her apartment, leaving her standing in the entry hall, her mouth gaping in indignation.</p><p> </p><p>Karl frowned at the paper in his hand, then almost laughed. It was something to do with using modified bacteria to produce biofuels; not something Karl himself had much experience with, but Rosemary, on the other hand, had very decided opinions on the subject. He flipped to the conclusions to be sure, and almost grinned at her scrawled “But as the author is an idiot who couldn’t come up with a well-designed study to save his life, I choose to ignore these conclusions.” He turned the page over, and the back of the page, instead of being blank, was filled with an invective-laden rant summarizing all the angry notes from earlier in the paper and a proposal for a better-designed study, all in Rosemary’s round, sprawling handwriting. A very good, very detailed proposal, which continued down the back of the pages containing the notes and citations before being cut off abruptly.</p><p>Karl frowned suddenly and set the paper down on the right side of the couch, reaching across the cushion to grab the next one off the pile on the side table. He flipped through it. This one was something to do with biomechanic structures, and it exhibited the same pattern, or almost; Rosemary’s handwriting was less critical about this paper, and rather than a proposal it had a list of small changes. One particular section of the paper had been highlighted intensely in three colors and had a scrawled “Pryce?” next to it.</p><p>Another paper, this one about growing algae as a food source, Rosemary’s notes outlining the ways the experiment would need to be modified to be run in space. Another paper, and more of the same, insightful commentary mixed in with criticisms mixed in with proposed improvements.</p><p>He barely registered the front door of the apartment opening and closing and did not realize he was alone in the apartment with Rosemary until she scooted herself onto the couch cushion to his left and tucked her feet up under her. He acknowledged her with a distracted nod, and she peered over at the paper in his hand, then turned and shuffled through the papers on the side table next to her, eventually unearthing a pair of turquoise reading glasses. She shoved the glasses on and turned her attention back to the paper he was holding.</p><p>“Oh, that!” She said, excited. “Dr. Park always writes such lovely papers.”</p><p>Karl turned towards her and gestured at the discarded papers on the other cushion. “How did I not know you were like this?”</p><p>Rosemary grinned. “The proposals you bring me are always rock-solid on the experimental design end, at least by the time they’re written up. We always hash them out in your weekly meetings, remember?”</p><p>Karl’s frown got a little deeper. “No one who can do this should be a lab manager.”</p><p>Rosemary’s grin faded. “Come now, Dr. Kelley. Surely you’ve been at Goddard long enough to realize that everyone here is just a little bit ahead of the curve.”</p><p>“There is ‘ahead of curve,’ yes, but this!” Karl snatched up the first paper he had picked up and turned to her experimental design, gesturing angrily at it. “This is 'should have lab of own.’” He turned back to her, making eye contact, and tried to read her expression, but could not.</p><p>After a long moment, she broke away, looking down at her hands. “Maybe somewhere else,” she said quietly, “but not at Goddard.” She turned back to him, her expression intense. “And somewhere else would care that I haven’t done original research in more than thirty years. Or that I don’t have anything beyond a Bachelor’s degree.”</p><p>“How many languages do you speak?”</p><p>Rosemary looked startled. “Well, that came out of nowhere.”</p><p>“Answer the question.”</p><p>“Other than English? Only three fluently.” He gestured as if to say, continue, and she ticked them off on her fingers. “German, Spanish, French.”</p><p>“And if you count the ones you are less-than-fluent in?”</p><p>“I can get by in Mandarin, and you already know how bad my Russian is.”</p><p>“I imagine you could 'get by,’ as you say, in a few other languages,” he said, and she gave him a confused look. “You have a broad base.” He glared down at the paper in his hand again. “There are places where lack of degrees, lack of research history would not be so important, and yet you are here, at Goddard, filing other people’s work, when you should be doing work of your own.”</p><p>“I like my job,” Rosemary said simply. “And I’m old enough that the idea of starting over again in some other company, some other country doesn’t hold any appeal. Most lab work starts to feel like solitary confinement after a few months, anyway.” She tucked her feet the rest of the way under her body and rose up on her knees, flinging an arm across the back of the couch and leaning against his shoulder to get a better look at the paper he was holding. "Which paper set this rant off, anyway?”</p><p>Karl froze, his anger dissipating, his entire body screaming with sudden awareness of Rosemary’s proximity. Somewhere near his ear, she said something that he could not parse, because her body was pressed up against his left side, and her breasts were resting against his arm, and all he wanted to do was strip her of that ridiculous, oversized red robe she was wearing and push her down on the couch and bury himself inside of her.</p><p>“You’re not paying attention at all, are you,” she murmured directly against his ear before sitting back against the arm of the couch. Karl snapped back to reality as she withdrew her body. He had dropped the paper on the floor, and he bent over to pick it up with numb fingers and set it back on the couch, trying to find his train of thought.</p><p>“That man earlier,” Karl said, still dazed. “Who was he?”</p><p>“Al?” Rosemary laughed a bit. “He didn’t even bother introducing himself, did he.”</p><p>“No. But that is not what I meant. Everyone knows who Al Bennett is. But no one seems to know what he <em>does</em>.” Other than come fuck Rosemary senseless about once a month, that was.</p><p>Rosemary laughed, perhaps catching a little of the jealousy that Karl had tried hard not to let into his voice. “Al’s… covert operations, you could say. Sometimes just recruiting and PR stuff, sometimes other more… unsavory things.”</p><p>“Am from Russia. Am well aware of some of the, ah, unsavory things he might be up to.”</p><p>Rosemary gave Karl an arch look over the top of her reading glasses. “Yes, with your background, you would be, wouldn’t you.”</p><p>Karl’s jaw tensed involuntarily, and he forced himself to relax. “And he is your partner?”</p><p>“No. We’re… friends, of a sort.” Rosemary held her hands up defensively at his skeptical look. “Friends with very good benefits, it’s true, but friends. Al doesn’t really do romance. Or relationships. Neither do I, for that matter. We just…” she looked off into space and gestured as if she was trying to snatch the words she was looking for out of the air. “We understand one another,” she added finally. “He knows that work is work, and play is play, and that playing doesn’t mean anything other than a bit of fun. Because that’s all I have time for.” She turned back to Karl, and they studied each other quietly for a moment.</p><p>That did not sound like a strictly monogamous arrangement, and though he suspected he would regret it, Karl knew he had to ask. “Do you ever, ah, 'play’ with other people?” he ventured.</p><p>Rosemary’s expression was serious. “That depends.”</p><p>“On what?”</p><p>“On whether that person understands that it really is just sex, and that what we do together stays in the bedroom.” She looked him up and down, considering. “I wasn’t sure… but now I am. You are interested, aren’t you.”</p><p>It wasn’t a question, but a flat statement of fact, and all he could do was nod in response. After all the times he had denied it to himself, after all the times her friendly overtures had made him wonder if she would be interested in more than friendship, the admission was almost a relief.</p><p>A pity he could only feel the danger of it.</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rosemary removed the reading glasses and set them aside again, examining Dr. Kelley carefully. His hands were fisted on his knees, and he was looking back at her in a sidelong, nervous fashion. Well, she was nervous too, she realized. God, how long had it been since she’d been nervous? Sex had always been straightforward, at least since…</p><p>“Al seems to think I should just fuck you, and be damned the consequences,” she said, cutting off her own train of thought. Dr. Kelley looked at her properly at that, his nonexistent eyebrows climbing his forehead. “Well. You can see how that won’t do.”</p><p>“Why will it not do?” He asked, his voice husky.</p><p>“What’s my job, Dr. Kelley?”</p><p>Dr. Kelley’s face snapped into his customary frown. “I do not understand…”</p><p>“Answer the question.”</p><p>“You… you order supplies. You keep things organized. You… I do not understand why you are asking me this question.”</p><p>“Perhaps I asked the wrong question, then. What’s the purpose of my job?” Dr. Kelley gave her a blank look, so she continued. “It’s to make the scientists I manage more effective, more efficient at their jobs. It’s to make you more effective.” She studied his face, knowing he might never be this unguarded around her again and regretting it for a moment. “And if part of making sure you’re more effective is to make sure that you’re not lonely… well. That falls under my purview as well.”</p><p>She’d been right. Dr. Kelley jerked back as if she’d slapped him, and he looked away. After a long moment of silence, he breathed out, “Blyad. You really are a stone cold bitch, aren’t you.”</p><p>“I have to be.” <em>I always have been</em>, came the echo in her mind. “So, you see.”</p><p>“Would fucking me and damning the consequences fall under your <em>purview</em>?” He sounded dangerous now, and she couldn’t blame him.</p><p>“No.” She said bluntly. “No, fucking you would have nothing at all to do with my job.” He looked back up at her, and oh god, she could read him all too easily all of a sudden, and wished she couldn’t. Well. Might as well get it all out in the open. “I’m attracted to you. That made my job easier, because it came naturally. Physically, you are…” she made a gesture that hinted at those beautiful cheekbones of his, his icy blue eyes, his slim knife-blade of a body. “And I’ve never quite been able to resist a pair of baby blues.” They looked darker now, and hurt, but she met his eyes anyway. “So fucking you would be… well. Sex stays separate from the job.” She raised a sardonic eyebrow at him, and the creases next to his mouth grew deeper. “I didn’t want you thinking this was a workplace romance or anything of that sort. Because it isn’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to fuck you.”</p><p>Dr. Kelley shut his eyes, and leaned forward, propping his elbows up on his knees and leaning his forehead against his hands. She watched him silently, angry for the first time in years at what the world had done to her, that she could so easily set aside scruples and make him believe she felt something for him other than lust. Angry, too, at what the world had done to him, that he was so in need of someone to care about him. </p><p><em>There’s an end to that,</em> she thought. <em>I’ve just become another person who has hurt him.</em></p><p> </p><p>The warmth he had felt earlier had bled away, and all that was left was a sort of frosty anger, Karl found. Anger at himself, for believing that he might not be alone, for believing that perhaps here was someone who had chosen him. Anger at Rosemary, who made it so easy to believe. He pressed his forehead into his hands, his fingertips into his scalp, fighting the urge to turn on Rosemary and lash out.</p><p>“You want to hurt me, don’t you.” Rosemary’s voice cut through the frost of his emotions, and he felt a stab of hatred, that she could so easily cut right to the core of the issue and get it out in the open.</p><p>“Am considering it,” he ground out, the muscles in his jaw clenching involuntarily. He turned his head slightly to look at her, and her face was smooth and calm and completely unafraid, an expression he had rarely seen and always dreaded. He had thought that face was a mask, hiding the warm, friendly Rosemary under it, but now he did not know which was the true her.</p><p>It made him want to scare her, to make her afraid of him, if that was what it would take to see something real.</p><p>She tilted her head, as if acknowledging this unspoken urge. “I would deserve it.”</p><p>“Blyad, suka.” He let out a long, angry puff of breath, and looked away, not able to meet her cool, direct gaze. “Do you <em>want</em> me to hurt you?”</p><p>“No, I want you to <em>fuck</em> me.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her tucking the robe more firmly around her body. She slid off the couch and stood there next to him for a moment. “I am going to bed. You can leave, or you can join me there.” He felt the light press of her hand on his shoulder and wanted to lean into it, wanted to recoil from her touch. And then she was gone, crossing the room to her bedroom door.</p><p>He caught up with her before she reached it, moving before he was even aware he had made the decision to do so, swinging her around and backing her against the wall of the living room. He pinned her there with his body, revulsion and want—no, <em>need,</em> this was too fierce an emotion for simple wanting—warring inside him. She looked up at him, still unafraid, and he leaned down to whisper in her ear. “I think I might hate you for this more than anything, suka.” He had been hard since Rosemary had cuddled up against him on the couch, and now he ground his cock against her stomach, enjoying the little hitch in her breath this caused. “I will not be gentle.”</p><p>“I don’t need you to be,” she whispered back. Suddenly he was flat on his back on the floor, all the breath knocked out of his body. Rosemary extracted her foot from beneath his ankle. “As you can see, I’m not without defenses.” As he stared up at her in shock, she undid the belt of the robe and let it fall to the ground, then turned and walked into her bedroom, completely naked.</p><p>Karl drew in a long, shuddering breath, and then hauled himself back to his feet and followed her.</p><p> </p><p>Rosemary paused just inside the door of her bedroom to flip on the overhead light, and managed only a couple of steps towards the bed before Dr. Kelley caught up with her, grabbing her by the hips and and pulling her back against him. The hard length of his cock pressed against her ass, all-too-evident despite the fact that he was still fully dressed. He bent his head to whisper to her again, his breath hot against her ear. “That was a nasty little trick.”</p><p>Rosemary leaned her head back against his shoulder and looked up at him. “You’ll find I’m full of nasty little tricks,” she murmured, nestling her body back against his, his cock rubbing back and forth against her as she moved against him. His breath caught, and he seemed to catch himself too, removing his hands from her hips and pulling back from her.</p><p>She turned to look at him. He was staring at her with a pained look on his face, one she was certain had nothing to do with his arousal. “Why?”</p><p>“Why what?”</p><p>“If you want to… to fuck me, why would you… would it not have been easier to lie?”</p><p>“No. Because you would inevitably want something from me that I do not have to give.” Rosemary gestured down at her body, staring at him intently. “This? This is all I have to give. And if the only way to get you to accept that is to make sure that you hate me as much as you want me, then that’s the way it has to be.”</p><p>“Could have tried. Could have left me with the illusion that I—” he cut himself off with a grunt, looking off to one side.</p><p>“That you what? Had a friend? An ally?” Rosemary shook her head and laughed, a little sadly. “Haven’t you figured out yet that there are no real friends here? Not for you, not for me. Not for any of us. Alliances only last as long as you can get something useful out of them.”</p><p>“And what did you get out of pretending to be my friend?”</p><p>“Eight months without Mr. Carter breathing down my neck about how his new pet scientist was becoming a hermit with atrophying social skills.” Dr. Kelley was still staring at the floor off to one side of his feet, every muscle in his body tense, and Rosemary approached him cautiously. She reached up to cup his cheek and turn his face towards her, and he let her, though a muscle in his jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth at her touch. “This won’t do at all,” she said, examining his face. “You’re barely able to stand me touching you. Go home, Dr. Kelley.”</p><p>She dropped her hand and turned away, crossing the room to pull open the drawer she kept the old, broken-down bras in, the ones that made it possible for her to sleep without being smothered by her own chest. Behind her, she heard Dr. Kelley shift and take a few steps, then pause. He spoke, his Russian accent even more pronounced than usual, his voice husky. “Is solution. You do not touch me. I do all touching.”</p><p>Rosemary froze and dropped the bra back into the drawer. “Given the way you recoiled from me just now…”</p><p>“Ah, but you were trying to take control there, suka.”</p><p>Rosemary turned and raised a sarcastic eyebrow at him. “And if I submit to you entirely, that will solve the problem, will it?”</p><p>He looked at her with a sudden flash of heat, a look that knocked the breath out of her body as surely as his impromptu trip to the floor earlier in the evening had done to him. “Yes. Will solve.”</p><p>She almost believed him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Lay down on the bed,” Karl ordered. Rosemary’s eyes had gone wide and her mouth had dropped open involuntarily, and now she took a deep, shuddering breath that shook her entire body. Blyad, she was magnificent. No longer young, it was true, and gravity had had its way with her figure over the years, but that only added to her appeal. The soft, light streaks of stretch marks accentuated the curves and folds of her body, and he wanted to trace every single one with his tongue. Every movement she made as she walked over to the bed and clambered in revealed a new place he wanted to explore.</p><p>If he thought about her as just a body that was his to explore, it was easier to forget that she had hurt him.</p><p>“Spread your legs for me, suka,” he added, once she was laying on the bed. Her breath had gone ragged and harsh, and what he could see of her face had an unfocused look about it. His clothing suddenly felt too tight, too rough against his skin, so he kicked his shoes off, pulled his shirt over his head so hastily that his glasses almost went with it, unfastened his trousers and pulled his underwear off with them. Rosemary watched him undress with a gratifying amount of need in her expression, the tip of her tongue darting out to moisten her lips and her gaze fixing on his cock when he stood up straight again. He stepped out of his trousers, and her eyes followed him hungrily as he approached the bed and sat on the edge, lifting each foot in turn to remove his socks, before wadding them up and throwing them at the pile of discarded clothing.</p><p>He settled himself on his knees between her spread thighs and leaned over her, supporting his weight on one hand as he simply looked at her. She shivered under the weight of his gaze, and he gave in to the urge to touch her. He had not meant to be gentle, but he could not seem to help it, tracing one of the stretch marks down the curve of her breast, then another along her side, exploring his way down her body a bit at a time. Right above her pubic hair, there was a curved scar, and he traced this too, before sliding a finger along the lips of her cunt.</p><p>“You’re wet, suka. Is this for me, or is it left over from your friend?”</p><p>Rosemary let out a little whimper as his finger found her clitoris and circled it. “Oh, don’t flatter yourself. Or him,” she said, her voice gone rough with need. “It might be left over from Al, but it’s lube.” At his questioning look she added, almost primly “I’m old, remember? Assistance is sometimes necessary.”</p><p>“I suppose that answers the question of what you were doing before I got here,” he muttered, disgruntled.</p><p>“Are you jealous?” Rosemary’s voice and expression were equally incredulous, and he distracted her from the question by flicking his finger across her clitoris. Rosemary let out a little yelp, and her hips came up off the bed.</p><p>“You are very responsive.” He circled her clitoris again, and then slid his finger along the lips of her cunt again, noticing with some satisfaction that she was already slicker than she had been a moment before. “I do not think this is lube, suka,” he said, lifting a wet finger and examining it. “Perhaps you can tell me what it is.” He lifted the finger to her lips, and she sucked it into her mouth with an eagerness bordering on the obscene, her tongue teasing the pad of his finger. He pulled his finger slowly back out of her mouth and she groaned.</p><p>“You’re right. That is definitely for you.”</p><p>Karl grunted in satisfaction and explored the slickness between her thighs again, then sucked his finger into his own mouth, tasting an intoxicating mixture of salt and musk and Rosemary, tainted somewhat by the taste of the lube. She watched him with dark, wide eyes, her breath coming even harder. He pulled his finger out of his mouth, slick with saliva now, and used it to circle one of her nipples. She shuddered under his touch, and let out another deep groan, followed by a whimper as he switched his finger to the other nipple and lowered his mouth to the first.</p><p>A glance up to her face to see how she was reacting revealed that she was clenching the pillow on either side of her head with white-knuckled fists, obviously resisting the urge to touch him by brute force, and the little bit of him that wasn’t focused entirely on the little noises she was making in the back of her throat as he played with her nipples appreciated the consideration.</p><p>He sat back between her thighs and looked down at her again, tracing that curved scar again, wondering… but she interrupted him with a voice tight with need. “There are condoms in the bedside table. If you’re ready to fuck me.”</p><p>“Hm. Let us see if you are ready.” Karl slid two fingers inside her and she whimpered, then let out a noise halfway between a scream and a moan as he curled his fingers upwards inside her and dragged them back out. “Ah, so that is how to make you make that noise.”</p><p>Rosemary lifted her head and looked at him across the expanse of her stomach. “I sound like a dying walrus,” she said, her voice barely audible, her words spoken on needy pants of breath.</p><p>In response, Karl just repeated the manuever. Rosemary’s eyes rolled back in her head and her head fell limply back to the pillow as she lifted her hips against his hand, trying to keep his fingers inside her.</p><p>“If you’re going to fuck me, do it properly,” she groaned.</p><p>“And how do you like to be fucked, suka?” he growled at her, teasing her entrance with his fingers before swiping them up against her clit, eking a whispery little moan out of her.</p><p>“From behind. Like the bitch I am,” she managed to get out.</p><p>Karl laughed, a dark chuckle. Yes, she certainly was that. “Well, then. Roll over like a good little bitch.” He clambered over her leg to get close to the bedside table, and opened it to find an array of condoms and several bottles of lube in a jumbled pile. Beside him, Rosemary had rolled over on to her hands and knees, a little bit unsteady on them.</p><p>He snagged a random condom from the pile and tore it open with unsteady hands, trying not to laugh as he realized it was bright orange. But that was not enough to distract him from Rosemary for long, not when she was naked and bent over beside him, waiting for, well, <em>him</em>.</p><p>He had imagined many times just how sexually responsive she must be to make the sort of sounds he had heard her make through the thin walls that separated their apartments, but blyad, it was one thing to imagine it and another thing entirely to experience it. He tried to steady himself by remembering the things she had said earlier in the evening, about her kindness to him being a job, but his hands still shook as he rolled the ridiculous-looking condom on and positioned himself behind her.</p><p>He held his cock steady in one hand and circled his hips, rubbing the head of his cock just against her entrance. She groaned and tried to move her hips back against his, to take him inside her, but he pressed a firm hand down on her upper back, pinning her chest to the bed and making it almost impossible for her to move under him.</p><p>“What is my name, suka?” He asked, pushing the head of his cock inside her and then withdrawing. “I want you to call me by my name.”</p><p>“Dr. Kelley…” she moaned.</p><p>He lifted the hand that was holding her in place for a moment in order to slap her on the ass, hard. She let out a choked little gasp that made Karl smile grimly. “Come now, suka, it is as if you are not even trying. What is my name?”</p><p>“Karl.” She was shaking now, he hoped with need. “Please fuck me, Karl.”</p><p>He pressed the head of his cock into her and withdrew again, and she moaned convulsively and tried to move against him again. “I think you can do better than that, suka.”</p><p>Her entire body stiffened as she realized what he meant. “That man is dead,” she said in a hoarse whisper.</p><p>“Then help me put him to rest.” He teased her with his cock again, this time letting it slide past her entrance to nudge against her clit.</p><p>He heard one, two, three harsh, ragged breaths from her, then… “Dmitri,” she hissed, barely audible over the hard panting of his own breath. “Yebat menya, Dmitri.”</p><p>The sound of her clumsily pronounced Russian would have taken him over the edge if he had already been inside her. As it was, he was frantic with need as he buried his cock to the hilt in her cunt in one hard stroke. She was slick and tight and perfect around him, better than he had ever imagined, and she let out a little scream and a muffled swear word as he started fucking her hard. He moved his hand from her upper back to grip her hips instead, pulling her back hard against him with each stroke, and she moved with him, just as frantic with her own need, letting out little yelps that were almost pained each time he thrust fully inside her. He did not notice her working an arm under her body until he felt her fingers down near his cock, one of them working away at her clitoris, the others dragging against the underside of his cock each time he thrust into her, and he was too far gone to protest this rebellion against his prohibition on touching.</p><p>It did not matter, in any case. Rosemary screamed suddenly, her cunt convulsing around him, and he let out a little grunt as his body stiffened and his own climax left him panting and gasping against her back, and this, whatever it had been, was over.</p><p> </p><p>Rosemary let Dr. Kelley go clean up in the bathroom first. She bustled around her bedroom while he was gone, picking his clothing up and shaking it out, folding it neatly on the end of the bed. When she heard the toilet flush and the sink start running, she grabbed her own nightwear back out of the drawer she had left open before they’d… before Dr. Kelley had ordered her on to the bed. She had timed it well; he opened the door to the bedroom again as she went to leave it, and she was able to duck around him with a distant smile and a polite nod.</p><p>She got to the bathroom and shut the door with a firm click, then turned and bent over to lay her forehead against the cool porcelain of the bathroom countertop.</p><p>What had she been thinking? Good lord. She didn’t sleep with the people she worked with directly. She’d kept to that rule for the better part of a decade. What had possessed her?</p><p>She lifted her head and stared at her reflection in the mirror, frowning. Was she really as lonely as Al seemed to think she was? Maybe she had been lonely for so long that she didn’t recognize how it felt any more.</p><p>She wanted to cry suddenly, and instead she turned on the cold tap of the bathroom sink and splashed water over her face, pressing her fingers against the corners of her eyes and willing the tears away.</p><p>She hadn’t cried in even longer than a decade. There simply hadn’t been time for it. She wasn’t going to start now.</p><p>Rosemary dried her face off, then shoved the shower curtain aside to get her washcloth. She cleaned herself up at the sink, used the toilet, put on the broken-down bra and shorts she slept in most nights, listening all the while for the click of the front door closing again and not hearing it. Perhaps he’d left while she’d been… well, breaking down.</p><p>“There’s no time for this, Rosemary,” she said out loud, looking her reflection in the eye. “Get your act together.” Her reflection was still troubled. She turned on her smile, the high-octane one that was so effective at hiding everything behind it. And if it wavered a bit at the corners, well, it had to be nearly midnight by now. Of course she was tired.</p><p>She took a deep breath and left the bathroom, pausing at the front door to put up the chain and lock it, then headed back to her bedroom and came to a startled halt. A pair of chunky black glasses were sitting on her bedside table, and Dr. Kelley was curled up on the far side of the bed, dead asleep and snoring quietly.</p><p>She flipped the overhead light off and waited a moment for her eyes to adjust, before padding over to the bed and staring down at him in the dim light filtering through the blinds from the parking lot lights, still not quite believing her eyes. How long had it been since she’d last slept with someone? Not sex, but sharing a bed with another person? She didn’t remember.</p><p>Rosemary squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her index fingers to the inner corners of her eyes again. She would not be touched by the actions of this ridiculous man. She opened her eyes again and glared at him, sitting down on the edge of the bed.</p><p>“Don’t you dare stop hating me, Dmitri Vologin,” she whispered, reaching across the bed and letting her hand hover briefly over his cheek. “Don’t you dare.”</p><p><em>Because I don’t think I could resist you if you do,</em> came the thought that she didn’t dare say out loud.</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>November 23rd, 1990</em>
</p><p>Dmitri woke in the early hours of the morning. No, Karl, he was Karl Kelley now, Dmitri Vologin had been dead for nearly two years. But then he rolled onto his side and was faced with the sleeping form of Rosemary, and he wanted to be Dmitri Vologin again, to be a man who had not yet been hurt by this strange, prickly, magnificent woman. Her back was to him, and a few gray hairs caught the dim light from the parking lot outside, and blyad, he wanted to touch her again.</p><p>So he did, curling in close behind her, wrapping an arm around her body. She had put on some sort of top, a thin bra that held her breasts in place but did nothing to prevent him from finding one of her nipples and brushing his fingers over it slowly, reverently. She murmured something in her sleep, and turned towards him, stretching as she slowly came to.</p><p>He found her other nipple and circled it gently, feeling it harden under his fingers, and although her eyes snapped open after a moment, she did not pull away or protest. Still… “Is this all right?” He froze, his hand cupping the curve of her breast, until she nodded, a slight movement barely visible in the dark of the room, and put up her hand to nudge his fingers back to her nipple. He let out the breath he had been holding in a relieved sigh and continued his cautious exploration. He had not taken the time to simply be with her last night, he had been too angry, had wanted too much to take her control from her, and now he found that he craved it.</p><p>Rosemary made a little noise in the back of her throat that nearly undid him. Hell, he could not imagine hating a woman who was soft and warm and close and made a noise like that when he touched her. But he did, with an intensity that surprised him, and he froze again, then pulled his hand away, a sudden surge of anger warring with the warmth.</p><p>Rosemary reached over and cupped his face, almost tenderly. “I was wondering if you’d forgotten to hate me,” she said in a voice made raspy by sleep. “Remember to hate me, Dr. Kelley.”</p><p>He sighed unhappily. “And what about Dmitri Vologin? Should he hate you too?”</p><p>There was a tiny hitch in Rosemary’s breath, and this time she pulled away from him, rolling onto her back and staring at the ceiling. She did not answer, so Karl reached out to touch her cheek carefully, and found it wet. What…?</p><p>He lifted himself up on an elbow and leaned in close, trying to make out what was wrong in the dim, early-morning light. He found tears pouring down her cheeks and let out an involuntary cluck of concern before reaching over her to grab a tissue from the box on her bedside table. He had never seen Rosemary cry, and, even as angry with her as he was right now, he found that he did not like the sight. He dabbed carefully at her face, until she snatched the tissue out of his hand and swiped angrily at her own cheeks with it.</p><p>“Even if Dmitri Vologin were still alive,” she said forcefully, “I would have nothing left to give him.”</p><p>Karl frowned. “And what do you have for Karl Kelley?”</p><p>“He’s already had all I have to give. Betrayal, hatred, and sex.”</p><p>“And warmth, and laughter, and friendship.” All of which she had given him in abundance, and all of which he was remembering once again in the face of this clearly real and unwanted display of emotion.</p><p>“None of that was real,” she spat viciously at him.</p><p>“I do not believe you.” Because as much as Karl tried, he could not bring himself to believe that every interaction he had ever had with this woman was a lie. No one was that good of an actress. If she truly did not care about him at all, something would have shown through.</p><p>“I will keep telling you until you do.” Rosemary’s voice rasped in a way that sounded painful, and he wanted to press a kiss to her throat, for all that he knew that would do nothing to sooth it. </p><p>He found himself wishing there were enough light in the room to make out her expression. The tears had been easy to see and understand, but now her face was twisted with some raw emotion that he could not parse. He considered grabbing his glasses, turning the bedside lamp on, forcing a confrontation, but he could not imagine how it would end. What was he expecting, that he would get a tearful apology from her for hurting him? That she would confess that she, what, really <em>did</em> like him? That she loved—no, definitely not that. What little he had seen of this Rosemary behind the mask made her out to be a proud woman, and he could not imagine her going back on what she’d already said, even if it was not true.</p><p>“Fine,” he said quietly. “If sex is one of the only things you have to give to me, then I will continue to take it.”</p><p>He turned his attention back to her body, stroking and touching, undressing her, working her to a fever pitch that had her biting down on her hand to stifle the noises she was making. When she was ready for him again—a process that, to his shame and an amused “Menopause is a bitch,” from Rosemary, required the assistance of lube—he rolled on another condom and pulled her over him and helped her ride them both to completion.</p><p>Afterwards, it was Rosemary’s turn to collapse against him, insensible, her lips pressing against his collarbone, the closest thing to a kiss that he had gotten from her. He took advantage of it, wrapping one arm around her back and placing the other hand at the nape of her neck, stroking gently. She came back to herself after a moment, shoved his arms away impatiently and slid off his body, then off the bed, presumably making for the bathroom. Karl sighed and stared at the ceiling for a moment, then stood and cleaned himself up as well as possible with the tissues from the bedside table, discarding them and the condom in the small trash can that was next to the table. He retrieved his clothing from where he’d stashed it on top of Rosemary’s dresser and dressed quickly, noting the time on Rosemary’s alarm clock with a frown. He would have time for a shower and breakfast before he was due in the lab, if he was quick.</p><p>He paused at the door to the bathroom and considered knocking, but the sound of the shower turning on made it clear that Rosemary had come to the same conclusion he had, so instead he unlocked the door and left her apartment.</p><p>If his own apartment seemed even more bare and empty and sterile than usual when he unlocked the door and let himself in, well. There was nothing he could do about that.</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Karl had hoped that one encounter with Rosemary would get her out of his system, especially after the nasty revelation she had forced on him about the true nature of her interactions with him. But then he had fallen asleep in her bed and had woken to her soft and warm beside him, and he had given himself permission for a second time. After all, he had not left her apartment. Clearly it still counted as the first time.</p><p>But today… Oh, <em>blyad. </em>He had been avoiding her, but on his way back from lunch he had heard her voice down a side corridor and had gone half-hard instantly. He had ignored it, of course, though the urge to lecture his cock about inappropriate people to continue lusting after was strong.</p><p>But that was why he found himself outside of Rosemary’s door again at eight that night, hating himself for it and twisted up in anticipation all at the same time. He knocked, and the door opened instantly. Had she been waiting for him? He thought that perhaps she had just returned to the apartment building a short while ago herself; she had taken off her shoes, but was otherwise the same well-groomed corporate Rosemary he normally saw in the office.</p><p>She looked at him for a long moment with an expression he could not read, and then silently opened the door further and stepped back to let him slip past her into the apartment. They stood in the entryway, awkwardness thick enough in the air to cut with a knife.</p><p>“Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Tea?” Rosemary offered up, gesturing at the kitchen door.</p><p>“Decaf?”</p><p>“That could be arranged.”</p><p>He followed her into the kitchen and sat at the table while she swapped out the filter on her coffee machine, measured out grounds, started it up. He cleared his throat, but couldn’t think of anything to say, and Rosemary shot him another indecipherable look.</p><p>She leaned on the back of the chair across from him, as far away as she could get while still seeming to join him at the table. “Have you eaten? I still have the Chinese food Al brought last night.”</p><p>“I could eat. If you do not mind sharing,” he said cautiously. She shook her head and went to the fridge, and after a few moments the hum of the microwave joined the dripping of the percolator, the smell of the reheating food mixing with the coffee and making everything feel strangely domestic.</p><p>He liked it, and that scared him. <em>She has been faking every emotion you thought she felt for you,</em> he reminded himself.</p><p>But blyad, it was so easy to forget that, sitting there in her kitchen, watching her bustle around as she pulled out silverware, retrieved mugs from the lowest shelves of her cabinets. Everything above the first shelf of the cabinets over her sink was completely bare, obviously a concession to her height, but she did not seem to have much to put in the cabinets anyway. Well, neither did he in his apartment. They had provided him with plates, bowls, cups, mugs, silverware, five sets of everything, apparently new but lacking in character, almost identical in every way to the pieces Rosemary had pulled out of her own cabinet. Was every apartment in this complex like that? The same couch and two armchairs in the living room, the same five place settings worth of dishes, the same little round kitchen table with two tall chairs? It felt like he was observing the entire thing from the outside all of a sudden, and realizing what solitary, focused lives they all must live. He ate most of his meals in the cafeteria; the food was good, for the most part, but it was still prepared in bulk. There was nothing personal about anything of it.</p><p>It was not so different from how he had been living his life in Russia, he reflected, but this place… Party politics had not prepared him for Goddard, for Carter. He was not given to strong feelings, but even compared to him, Rosemary had to be as cold as ice under all her manufactured cheer. Was that what would happen to him as well, after fifteen years in this place?</p><p>But perhaps… Perhaps this place was not what had made her what she was.</p><p>The microwave beeped, and Rosemary came towards the table with a pair of bowls heaped with steaming piles of beef and broccoli. “Hope you don’t mind eating out of a bowl, the plates are all in the sink. Nice stuff, huh? Microwaves like a dream, but doesn’t heat up hardly at all. A miracle of Goddard Futuristics ceramics engineering.”</p><p>“Hm. What happened to your child?”</p><p>Rosemary did not quite drop the bowls, but both of them hit the surface of the table rather hard indeed, and Karl’s wobbled back and forth a bit. He reached out to steady it. She stared down at the table for a long moment, then gave him a sharp look. “That’s a hell of a non sequitur, coming from a man who I’m pretty sure I’ve told multiple times that my personal business is none of his.”</p><p>Karl picked up a fork and scooped up some of the beef and broccoli. Before transferring it to his mouth, he tapped his lower abdomen with his other hand and said “You have scar. Right here. Typical of c-section.” He thought about adding more, but filled his mouth with the cheap Chinese food instead, carefully not looking directly at Rosemary as he chewed. He wanted to know, but if he showed too much interest, she would probably kick him out of her apartment without the rest of his dinner, and even cheap Chinese food was better than the assortment of tv dinners and ramen that made up his apartment’s current supply of ready meals.</p><p>Rosemary scooted her bowl over to the other side of the table and hopped up on the chair. He examined her carefully as she dug in to her own food. She seemed calm, but something around her eyes was surprisingly… </p><p><em>Bleak is the operative word,</em> he thought. <em>She thinks I have noticed something I shouldn’t have.</em></p><p>“I forgot,” she said, in between contemplative bites of beef and broccoli, “that your medical degree is actually worth something.”</p><p>“Oh, thank you very much,” he scoffed, stabbing a broccoli stalk with his fork. “Discount the one degree that actually makes me a doctor.”</p><p>“How many Ph.D.s do you have again?”</p><p>He huffed irritably and turned back to his food. All but one were honorary, anyway. Without looking up, he said “So you were a mother.”</p><p>“Oh, no. Never that.”</p><p>“Your child died?” He peered over the top of his glasses at her, watching her face carefully for some reaction.</p><p>“No, as far as I’m aware, he’s still alive and kicking.” Rosemary immediately looked appalled. “Why the hell did I just tell you that?”</p><p>“Am very good listener.”</p><p>“No you’re not.” But she had a smile on her face now, and that was an improvement.</p><p>“Have the face for it,” he said, nodding sagely.</p><p>She rolled her eyes. “No you don’t. You look like a Bond villain, for crying out loud.”</p><p>Karl felt a smile stretch his own cheeks now, involuntary and delighted. “Ah, I am villain? Excellent. Villains get to use the exciting forms of interrogation, do they not?”</p><p>Rosemary let out an undignified snort of laughter and his heart felt like it had stopped in his chest. She shot him an arch look. “And what exciting forms of interrogation did you have in mind for this evening, then?”</p><p>Karl took an unsteady breath, and looked Rosemary up and down, his eyes lingering on the buttons of her blouse. “I can think of a thing or two,” he murmured.</p><p>Rosemary rapped him on the knuckles with the handle of her fork. “Dinner first.”</p><p>Karl gave her a mock salute with his own fork and dug in to what remained of his dinner, eating hastily to avoid any further conversation that could break this sudden truce between them, this return to the almost-friendship they had spent the past two years sharing. Rosemary turned quiet and contemplative herself, staring down at her food, pulling the broccoli to pieces and stabbing individual florets with her fork. He finished well before she was done, so he stood and rinsed his bowl, then added it to the pile of plates in the sink.</p><p>He briefly considered washing the dishes—no, Rosemary was still eating. If he was going to be absurdly domestic, he might as well wait until all the dirty dishes were there. Not that being absurdly domestic was his style, but it was tempting, if only to see the look on Rosemary’s face. So instead, he leaned back against the counter and watched her pick at her food. The thought that he should simply go to the living room and dig in to the morass of paper there and find something interesting to read until she was ready to join him crossed his mind, but he found himself strangely reluctant to leave her presence, and cast about for something else to occupy his time.</p><p>Rosemary rubbed her free hand across the back of her neck, running one finger under her ascot, and Karl felt his lips twitch into another involuntary smile. He knew what to do.</p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rosemary hadn’t been paying attention to where Dr. Kelley was in the kitchen, so she didn’t even register the sudden warmth of his presence behind her back at first. Then she felt the press of his forearms down onto her shoulders, and his chest against the upper part of her back as he peered over her shoulder.</p><p>“What are you doing?” she asked, as his fingers fumbled with the knot of her ascot.</p><p>“Simply trying to make you more comfortable,” he said, working the ascot free. It disappeared from her peripheral vision, and she turned her head to find that he had draped it around his own neck.</p><p>“Are you?” she asked, bemused. “Why?”</p><p>He moved to her right side and reached for the buttons at the front of her jacket, undoing them with agonizing slowness. “When was the last time someone else did something for your comfort, suka?”</p><p>She looked away from him and stared blankly at her dinner. Oh, lord, this man was making her want to cry again. Her suits were well-tailored, and she loved the ascots, but by the end of the day… yes, she was uncomfortable. And not even Al had noticed that.</p><p>Dr. Kelley finished with the last button and then took the fork from her limp fingers, setting it across the bowl. He helped her slide her arms out of the jacket, and she leaned forwards mechanically so that he could hang it from the back of her chair. He picked up the fork again and put it back in her left hand, and offered up something that was almost a smile. “Eat.”</p><p>She scooped up a bit of sauce-covered rice, only to drop it back into the bowl as he started in on the tiny, close-spaced buttons of her blouse. “Dr. Kelley…” she protested.</p><p>“Simply the first few,” he said, but the first two buttons were undone and he was showing no signs of stopping. She let out the breath she’d been holding when he fingered the fifth button, then came to a halt, folding back the unbuttoned sections of her blouse back and exposing her cleavage and more than a little bit of her bra. “Keep eating, suka,” came his voice against her ear as a finger traced the curve of her breast. “Must finish dinner first.”</p><p>An anxious, keening noise forced its way out of her throat, and he chuckled, the sound making her entire body go weak with want. His hands went to her right sleeve, undoing the buttons at her wrist and rolling it up to her elbow, then he leaned across her to do the same to her left. She placed her right hand on his hip, steadying him, and somehow resisted the urge to bury her face against his neck.</p><p>When he was finished with the sleeve, he placed the fork back into her hand, yet again. “Eat, Rosemary,” he said in a voice that was suddenly rough with something that might have been desire. Rosemary was glad for this sign that she was somehow affecting him as much as he was affecting her.</p><p>He pulled back from her and went to sit in the chair across the table again, his movements jerky, his eyes devouring her. Yes, definitely affected, she decided.</p><p>She swallowed dryly, her eyes darting around the kitchen as she tried to think of something to say. The room was oddly silent all of a sudden, and suddenly she remembered, and rose half up out of her chair, balancing between the table and the lower bar of chair that she always used as a footrest. “The coffee.”</p><p>Karl made a “stay seated” gesture with his hands and got up himself. “I will take care of it.” He made his way over to the percolator, pouring the coffee into the mugs she’d pulled out of the cabinet earlier before glancing over his shoulder at her. “Do you take cream? Sugar?” His voice was solicitous, and he was obviously making an effort to not look at her chest, though his eyes darted back to her exposed cleavage every so often.</p><p>“Black,” she said, and he gave her a lopsided smile, coming over to set one of the mugs in front of her and then going into her fridge in search of the milk she knew he liked in his own coffee. She hoped it hadn’t gone bad in the last week… no, there Karl was, taking a cautious sip of his coffee and then pouring it and the rest of the milk down the sink, rinsing his mug before pouring a fresh cup of coffee for himself, black this time.</p><p>Rosemary took a sip of her own coffee as he joined her. She hadn’t thought to program the machine to turn on the warming plate once it was done brewing, but thankfully the coffee was still warm, and she took another sip of it of it before turning back to her food. She ate quickly now, alternating bites of beef and broccoli with swigs of coffee, ignoring the rather peculiar taste combination this made for. Across the table, Karl was sipping his own coffee and looking at her with what appeared to be a combination of amusement and barely disguised lust.</p><p><em>You need to remind him to hate you,</em> came the little voice in her head. She shoved it aside.</p><p><em>I am going to regret this,</em> she told the voice. <em>But first I’m going to make sure I have nothing left to regret at all.</em></p><p>Rosemary finished her dinner and coffee perhaps a little too quickly, eager to find out what Karl had planned for the evening. But immediately after she set her fork down in her empty bowl and tried to stand to go put it in the sink, Karl was at her side, pushing her gently back into her chair before gathering all the dishes up and and heading towards the sink. He pushed his sleeves up to his elbows, rooted around in the cabinet under the sink for a moment, and pulled out the dish soap. And then… yes, yes he <em>was</em> washing her dishes, wasn’t he.</p><p>Rosemary watched him, bemused. More than once, she had come in to his lab to find him cleaning absentmindedly, sterilizing glassware or scrubbing down a table with bleach. When she had suggested on those occasions that he could leave cleaning his lab to a lab tech, or better yet, a janitor, he had admitted that cleaning helped him think his way through whatever problem he was currently having with his research.</p><p>She wondered what he was trying to think his way through now.</p><p>Karl made short, silent work of her dirty dishes, putting them in the rack by the sink to dry before turning back towards her and leaning against the counter behind him. Rosemary found she was staring at his forearms; there was something about a man’s forearms, <em>this</em> man’s forearms, especially when he had rolled up his sleeves. Something to do with tendons and muscles and oh, <em>oh</em>, she could not think straight around him. Not like this, not here in her kitchen, not after he had so deliberately started undressing her earlier, stripping her of her corporate armor.</p><p>Not after she’d eaten a meal with him, not after he’d decided to do her goddamn dishes in the most splendid display of domesticity she had seen from a man in years.</p><p>And especially not when he was staring at her from across the room like he wanted to leap on her and devour her.</p><p>Rosemary swallowed nervously, and went for levity to break the tension in the air. “So. What foul methods were you planning to use to interrogate me this evening, Herr Doktor?”</p><p>Karl rolled his eyes and scoffed. “At least your German pronunciation is better than your Russian is.”</p><p>“Miles better. But you didn’t seem to mind my Russian last night.” Karl’s expression went dark and seductive at that reminder, and Rosemary’s breath caught in her throat.</p><p>“No, I suppose I did not,” he responded, his voice dropping to a growl. He looked her up and down slowly, his gaze caressing her from wig to pantyhose-clad feet, lingering in places, on her lips, on the curves of her breasts where they were exposed by her unbuttoned shirt, at the swell of her hips, the slope of her thighs. She felt it almost as intensely as a real caress, and her ability to breathe properly showed no signs of returning to her.</p><p>Finally, he spoke again, his voice still a growl. “I spent half of yesterday imagining you dressed just like that, down on your knees, my cock in your mouth,” he said, meeting her eye for a moment before his gaze was drawn irresistibly to her lips again. “Imagining your hands on my thighs, imagining that red lipstick of yours all the way around me.”</p><p>Rosemary was pretty sure she was panting by now, but she couldn’t quite read her own body any more through the white-hot surge of lust that had suddenly filled her. She looked across the room at him with heavy-lidded eyes, examining him from head to toe in much the same way he had examined her. “Was that what that look was about,” she murmured, eyes caught by the very obvious erection Karl was suddenly sporting, clearly visible even through his trousers. She flicked her eyes up purposefully to meet his own direct gaze and added “I did wonder.”</p><p>Her voice came out as a caressing purr, and Karl jerked a bit in reaction, then wrapped his hands deliberately around the edge of the counter behind him, though Rosemary couldn’t tell if he meant it as a support or as a means of holding himself back.</p><p>“Well, suka?” he rasped.</p><p>Rosemary tilted her head to one side as if considering and continued in the same caressing tone, enjoying the effect it had on Karl. “It depends. Do you intend to return the favor?”</p><p>Karl made a strangled noise and let go of the counter, launching himself across the room in her direction. She wasn’t quite sure how he found the strength for it—she was a heavy woman and he was not a large man—but he somehow managed to turn her chair away from the table in his direction with her still in it. He dropped to his knees in front of her, hands clenched on her calves as he stared intently up at her.</p><p>“Of course I do, suka. I have tasted you once. I will not say no to more.”</p><p>Rosemary bit her lower lip hard, trying to regain some semblance of control over herself, but he was already working his hands up under her skirt. At his prompting tug, she found herself half-standing on the lower rung of the chair, one hand on the table and the other on his shoulder to balance herself as he rucked her tight skirt up around her waist. He reached up under the folds of it and found the waistbands of her pantyhose and underwear, and pulled both down her legs in one smooth move, waiting for her to lift a foot at a time so he could remove them and then discarding them to one side before sitting back on his haunches to admire what he’d just achieved.</p><p>Rosemary sat back down hard, her legs spreading a bit without the skirt to hold them in place, and oh, god, the look on his face when she tilted her hips forward towards the edge of the chair and let her legs dangle to either side, leaving her open and exposed to his gaze… Well. She suspected the memory of that look would keep her company for many a long and lonely night.</p><p>He rose back up to his knees, deliberately placing his hands on her thighs and rubbing his thumbs along their sensitive inner curves, slowly working his way up until his thumbs brushed her pubic hair with each sweeping caress.</p><p>Rosemary thought that if he didn’t put his mouth on her immediately she might start begging, but then one of his thumbs found its way to her clitoris and two of the fingers of his other hand slipped between the lips of her cunt and inside her in one smooth move. Her mind blanked out again in white-hot lust.</p><p>“You are soaking wet, suka,” he murmured, pulling his fingers out of her and sucking them clean. “Soaking wet and delicious.”</p><p>All Rosemary could do was let out a strangled moan. He chuckled and patted her leg with the fingers he had just sucked clean. “Come now. You cannot be comfortable like that. I want your legs up around my shoulders.”</p><p>Somehow Rosemary found the strength to comply, though whatever it was his other hand was doing between her legs left her feeling limp and boneless. The instant her thighs were resting on his shoulders, he wrapped his arms around her thighs and leaned forward, replacing his fingers with his lips and tongue. Rosemary relaxed back in her chair, letting the sensations caused by the little flicks and twirls of his tongue carry her off into a pleasurable haze.</p><p>She wondered briefly through the haze what it would be like to kiss a man who was good with his tongue like that. She wondered if she could bring herself to kiss again, after all these years.</p><p>Rosemary let out a startled yelp as the brief scrape of teeth joined his tongue in torturing her clit, the sharp sensation returning her mind to her body, to the orgasm this encounter was no doubt leading to. She was close. Very close.</p><p>“Do that thing you did with your fingers last night,” she begged, staring down at him and meeting his eyes as he looked up at her from between her thighs. She stroked the curve of his ear gently, and even that small pleasurable sensation made him shudder and shut his eyes and, from the feel of things, briefly lose track of what he’d been doing between her thighs. “You know the one,” Rosemary continued, her voice low and raspy even to her own ears as she ran light fingers over his bare scalp.</p><p>She felt his lips twitch into a smile where they were pressed against her, then he worked a hand up between them and complied.</p><p>Rosemary shuddered and twitched, then fell back limply in the chair, her orgasm hitting her with the force of a freight train.</p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Karl was, for once, grateful that it was his apartment right next door to Rosemary’s, and that she was at the end of the hall, with no other next-door neighbors. Though given the volume of the noises Rosemary was making, he sincerely hoped that both her neighbor across the hall and the one directly above her were out. He did not want to share her moans with anyone, and the thought that someone might be listening in the way he once had through his bedroom wall… the thought was not to be countenanced, that was all. Perhaps it was hypocritical of him, wanting to be the only person who ever heard her like this when he had so eagerly listened in on her encounters with Al. It was certainly far too optimistic; all Rosemary seemed to want him for was what they were doing right now, and he knew a woman as attractive as she was would have options to choose from when she wanted someone to do things to her.</p><p>And what he had just done with his fingers had made her eyes roll back in her head and her entire body twitch convulsively as she screamed out her climax. He clung to her hips as her thighs squeezed hard on either side of his face. As her legs relaxed, they almost fell off his shoulders, and he used his tongue to gentle her through her orgasm until she whimpered and whispered a hoarse “Too much,” down at him.</p><p>He extracted his shoulders from beneath her thighs, standing and leaning close over her, wanting desperately to kiss her. She shuddered and wrapped her legs around his hips almost instinctively, crossing her ankles behind his back and pulling his hips close against her own. He ground against her just as instinctively, aware of the mess this would make on the front of his trousers and not caring at all in the face of a pleased whimper from Rosemary. But when he leaned down to kiss her she turned her head away, so he pressed a string of hot, needy kisses to her throat and the exposed portion of her cleavage instead, wondering briefly why she had avoided letting him kiss her mouth. His own mouth was still wet with her, but given how eagerly she had sucked the taste of herself off his finger when he had offered her the chance the other night…</p><p>Rosemary’s teeth nipped at his earlobe, derailing his train of thought entirely. She sucked his earlobe briefly into her mouth for a moment, then released it to press a hot kiss, accompanied by a little flick of her tongue, to the pulse point right below his ear. He moved against her, grabbing her hips to keep her close, grinding his clothing-covered erection against her cunt as he buried his face against her shoulder, breathing the scent of her in.</p><p>He was tempted, more than tempted, to throw his plan for the evening to the wind and just pull his trousers and boxers down around his knees and plunge into her right there at her kitchen table. But no, he reminded himself, she would want a condom, and he suspected that the moment would be lost in the time it took to go to the bedroom and get one out of her bedside table. He was worried if he left her, the warm glow of the domesticity they had shared earlier in the evening would evaporate and he would be reminded that she felt only lust for him, that she would pull away to the cool distance she hid so well in.</p><p>Still. Perhaps… He thrust his hips against her again, and she groaned, and he turned his head slightly to whisper against her ear. “Should we…?”</p><p>Rosemary murmured back, her lips still pressed to his neck. “We should go to the bedroom. It’s time for me to return the favor, I think. And I’ll want a condom for that.”</p><p>Karl pulled back and looked down at her, a little concerned. “I didn’t think to ask… is there…?”</p><p>Rosemary understood what he was getting at. “I’m clean,” she said, meeting his eye. “And I’ve seen your medical records, so I know you are. I just prefer to… I like being protected. I should have gotten you a dental dam.”</p><p>Karl chuckled. “Ah, but then I would not have been able to taste you, suka. And I did so enjoy that.”</p><p>Rosemary’s breath seemed to catch in her throat, and she stared up at him, her eyes wide. After a moment, she looked to one side with muttered and emphatic “God,” and he suspected that if her skin were a little paler or the light in her kitchen were a little brighter, he would be able to see her blushing.</p><p>He pulled back a little further from her and lifted his hands to her shoulders, then ran them down her arms to gather up her hands in his own. “Come, then. To the bedroom.”</p><p>Rosemary slid off the chair and onto extremely unsteady legs, taking a stumbling step forward so that Karl was forced to catch her up in his arms or be bowled over by her weight. He was not forced to press a kiss to her forehead, but he did that as well.</p><p>Rosemary did not seem to mind. She stood there in his arms for a moment, nuzzling his chest, before lifting her head a bit to kiss his neck. “I can stand on my own now, I think. You go sit on the bed. I’ve got something to, ah…” She pressed a second kiss to his neck. “Something to take care of first.” She pulled back, lifted a hand to grip his chin and make sure he was looking her in the eye. “Don’t touch anything. I want to do it myself.”</p><p>Karl suddenly felt none-too-steady on his own legs. “Yes, ma’am,” he breathed out, releasing his hold on her body and stepping back from her. She smirked up at him, and slipped around him, heading across the entrance hall to the bathroom, and he went to her bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. He glanced around the room, his mind blank except for the anticipation of whatever it was Rosemary had planned, then frowned, distracted. His glasses were smudged. He removed them and started cleaning them on the edge of his shirt.</p><p>Rosemary entered the room, and laughed a little at the sight of him. “Fastidious man,” she said, her tone almost affectionate. He put his glasses back on and found that she had pulled her skirt back down and… oh, blyad, she had applied a fresh coat of that red lipstick of hers.</p><p>She crossed over to the bedside table and pulled a condom out of the drawer, then came over and knelt at his feet, setting the condom on the bed at his side. He stared down at her, at her cleavage, at the hint of a bra peeking through her unbuttoned shirt, at her heavy-lidded eyes and red lips, and his breath stopped in his chest.</p><p>Rosemary chuckled, warm and low and utterly tempting, sliding her hands up his calves, gripping his knees and spreading his legs apart so she could nestle closer between them. And then her hands smoothed over the front placket of his trousers, tracing the shape of his erect cock beneath them and he thought he might never breathe properly again.</p><p>He had taken the time to explore her the night before, but she had touched him, not in this way. He had not wanted her to.</p><p>He wanted her to now.</p><p>She reached around him to finish the job of untucking his shirt, and then started in on unbuttoning, tossing it off to one side once she was done. She ran her hands down his back next, pulling him close, finding one of his nipples with her tongue and oh, blyad, it almost took his mind off the fact that she was unbuttoning his trousers, unzipping, caressing his cock through one layer less. Rosemary’s mouth moved to his other nipple and he groaned, leaning forward over her, resting his forearms against her shoulders. Rosemary pulled back from his chest, and whispered against his ear. “Stand up a bit, doctor. Let’s get your pants down around your ankles.”</p><p>He let out a soft little huff of laughter, and leaned forward more, letting her pull his trousers and boxers down, and as promised she left them there, around his ankles. He looked down at her, but she had turned her focus entirely to his cock, gripping it firmly and rubbing her hand up the entire length. A drop of precum oozed out, and Rosemary leaned forward and swiped her tongue across it, making a small satisfied noise in her throat as she did.</p><p>Karl definitely would never breathe properly again. “What about protection, suka?” he managed to ask in a strained, husky voice.</p><p>Rosemary looked up at him and smiled, a warm, seductive smile that wrapped around him and took hold some place he suspected was very near his heart. “You got the chance to taste me,” she responded, her voice just as husky. “I couldn’t pass up the chance to see what you tasted like.” She lowered her head to his lap again and he felt her suck the head of his cock into her mouth, tongue flicking against the sensitive underside, and he moaned and leaned back on his hands, staring languidly down at her as she slowly took him in her mouth. After an all-too-brief exploration, she released his cock from her mouth and sighed, then reached for the condom and opened it, rolling it slowly down his length. Then her lips were on his cock again and her hands were on his thighs, her fingers gently stroking and exploring.</p><p>It did not take her long to start up a steady rhythm, her head bobbing up and down on his cock, the steady compression of lips and tongue that he could feel even through the latex of the condom making his eyes roll back in his head, making his hips thrust up against her involuntarily. One of her hands wrapped around the base of his cock, moving as her mouth did, and the other slid around his body, stroking down his spine until a finger found the sensitive place near the base of it, right where his lower back melded into his buttocks.</p><p>The small circles she made there left him cursing under his breath, squeezing his eyes shut and thrusting harder up against her mouth. She made another satisfied noise deep in her throat, the vibration adding to his pleasure, and he cursed again, louder, and sat up, pressing his hands against her shoulders to force her mouth off his cock.</p><p>“Something wrong?” Rosemary asked, looking up at him with concern.</p><p>“No, I just…” Karl let out a huff of breath, and stared down at her, unable to explain what was going through his mind.</p><p>Her presence got him hot and bothered much faster than he was used to, at his age, but he was still old enough that it took time to recover between sessions, and he did not know how long she would continue to allow this.</p><p>Just once, just once before this entire thing ended, because he knew it would end, it had to end, she was too prickly and difficult to accept anything else, so just once he wanted something simple. He wanted to lay her on the bed and get between her thighs and to take her face-to-face, not staring at her back, not watching her from below as she rode him. He wanted to look her in the eye as he entered her, as he filled her.</p><p>He wanted, and oh how strange and delicate a feeling that was.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rosemary stared up at Karl in confusion. He’d been enjoying the blowjob, she was sure, even if having a condom in the way made it less fun for both of them. She didn’t particularly care for the taste of latex, after all, and she thought that if he had asked her not to use the condom, she would not have. And that would have given her plenty of reason to chase him out of her bedroom once he had finished. But he hadn’t, and she had used the condom, and now he was staring down at her, a strange look on his face that she suspected was confusion as well, though perhaps not <em>just</em> confusion.</p><p>He licked his lips, almost nervously. Her eyes were drawn to them, wondering if he still tasted like her, wondering if she could bring herself to press her own lips to his and find out.</p><p>She didn’t know why she wanted to kiss this man. She’d been with plenty of men and women and even a few people of more nebulous gender since she’d last kissed someone, and had never once been tempted, had never once been able to think about the act without feeling a sudden surge of revulsion, but suddenly, with him…</p><p>“Stand up,” he said, quietly, insistently, and helped her to her feet. When she was standing in front of him, he pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her waist and finding the hook and zipper on her skirt, loosening it and letting it drop to her feet. His cheek rested against her chest, but he didn’t make a move to bury his face in her cleavage, as some past lovers had done. He simply rested his head there gently, and she almost missed its presence when he pulled back and started working on the remaining buttons of her blouse.</p><p>Rosemary helped him remove her blouse when he’d finished with the buttons, still staring down at him in confusion. He was being so very gentle with her, so tender, and she wanted to embrace it, wanted to fight against it and work him back into the sort of unforgiving passion he had been in the night before, when he’d taken her so hard and fast from behind.</p><p><em>I ought to hurt him,</em> she told herself. <em>I ought to remind him that I am not safe to touch like this, that I am Goddard’s creature alone, and anyone else who tries to gentle me gets savaged instead.</em></p><p>But he was looking at her reverently, tracing the fine lines of stretch marks across her cleavage, smoothing his hands down her sides, around her body. He undid the clasp of her bra and removed it, and the fact that her breasts sagged immediately under the influence of gravity did not seem to stop him from continuing his worshipful exploration. And oh, <em>oh</em>, his mouth was on one of her nipples, and she sagged towards him, her hands on his shoulders to support herself, his going to her hips, holding her steady as he did things to her nipple that made her whimper and then cry out. And then he switched to the other one, and still, <em>still</em>, he was so slow and sweet and reverent, even as she grew more restless, more feverish with desire.</p><p>He lifted his head from her chest, and smiled up at her, a fierce, predatory smile that put the lie to the gentleness he’d been showing her. “Tell me, suka, if I laid you down on the bed and fucked you, would you be ready for me?”</p><p>Rosemary’s breath left her in a rush. “Perhaps you should check,” she managed to get out, her voice soft and barely audible, even to her own ears. But it was clear he had heard her; that wicked smile grew more wicked still and his fingertips dug hard into her hips, a fierce, possessive hold on her.</p><p>“Let us lay you down first,” he responded, and she let him guide her, let him pull her onto the bed, parted her thighs for him as he first explored her with his fingers and then pressed his hips against her own, holding himself over her and looking down at her with the same fierce, predatory smile on his face. </p><p>She was still slick and ready under his fingers and was grateful for it, grateful that her body was cooperating, grateful that they wouldn’t have to break this moment to go hunting for lube, grateful that he was already wearing a condom. She bent her knees, pressing them flat against the bed, rubbing up against him, feeling the length of him nudge against her entrance, then rush up into her as she pressed her hips up against his.</p><p>His predatory smile left him as she took him inside her, turning to one of wonder. His eyes stayed open, fixed on her face, watching her closely as he started to move in her. She moved with him, desperate, straining, but even in this it seemed he wanted to be slow, gentle, tender, and it was so strange, so unexpected.</p><p>Rosemary wondered, suddenly, if this was still just sex for him.</p><p>He looked down at her, that same strange expression of wonder on his face, and leaned in to rest his forehead against her own. His eyes squeezed shut as his hips moved against her in jerky, uncontrolled thrusts, then his entire body shuddered and he collapsed against her, burying his face against her neck, his breath hot and panting against her skin.</p><p>Rosemary waited for him to come back to himself, to recover and withdraw from her quickly as he had the night before, when he had taken her so fiercely from behind. But instead, he seemed barely conscious, nuzzling absentmindedly against her neck.</p><p>“The condom,” she said finally, lifting a hand to his shoulder to nudge him gently.</p><p>He let out a low grunt of acknowledgement and lifted his weight off of her, his hand moving between them to take hold of the condom before he withdrew from her body. He looked down at her again after he did, leaning to rest his forehead against her own for a moment, then pulling away and heading towards the door to the bedroom. A few moments later she heard the bathroom door close behind him.</p><p>Rosemary lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, unsure if it had still been just sex for her either.</p><p>This time, she wasn’t surprised to find him in her bed when she’d finished with her own business in the bathroom. Instead, she simply turned the overhead light off and climbed in next to him, keeping carefully to her side of the bed, strangely comforted by the sound of him snoring next to her.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>November 24th, 1990</em>
</p><p>Karl had not meant to fall asleep in Rosemary’s bed the night before, or at least not at first. But when he had returned to her bedroom in search of his clothing after cleaning himself up in the bathroom, he had been surprised to find that she had folded it and set it on the top of her dresser instead of at the end of her bed, as she had after that first time they had had sex.</p><p>And that bed had looked so very inviting after what had been a long and somewhat fraught day, full of internal debates about what to do about Rosemary, finally ending in… whatever it was last night had been. Karl wanted to think that last night had been a sign that Rosemary was not so indifferent to him as she claimed to be, but he knew now how capable she was of faking emotions that were not there, and he could not bring himself to trust that he had seen anything more than sheer physical lust from her.</p><p>The lust, at least, he could be sure of.</p><p>He had slept like the dead, waking up to a bed just as empty as the one he had clambered into the night before. Not to an empty apartment, though; the smell of coffee wafted in to the bedroom from the direction of Rosemary’s kitchen, along with a few small clinks and clatters. He rolled over to snag his glasses off of the bedside table and frowned at the time, then remembered with relief that it was Saturday. He still needed to go in to the lab and check on the progress of the current batch of rats, of course, but Carter’s productivity statistics treated weekend work like a bonus, which meant that heading in late would not result in Rosemary sitting him down in a week or two to have a talk about keeping regular hours.</p><p>Karl found his clothing and dressed, then opened the door to the bedroom cautiously. There was no sign of Rosemary, so he made his way to the front door in stockinged feet, hoping to escape without disturbing her at whatever morning routine she was about.</p><p>Rosemary appeared at her kitchen doorway as he tried to sneak past. She was fully dressed and obviously ready for the day, and looked him over with a sort of studied disinterest. “Coffee?”</p><p>Karl removed his hand from the knob to the front door—not that trying it would have done much good with the chain still up, he noted with mild dismay—and turned to face her. “Thank you,” he said stiffly. “May I use the bathroom first?”</p><p>Rosemary gave him a little nod, just as stiff as his voice had been, and he turned again and fled into the bathroom, not quite slamming the door shut behind himself. And then he dropped his shoes and leaned forward against the bathroom sink, trying to shove down a sudden surge of anxiety.</p><p>Sex with Rosemary was one thing. Even dinner last night had not been about the food; it had been about the tension between them, the build-up to what came after.</p><p>But if he sat down and had coffee with her, that was something else entirely.</p><p>Karl laughed shakily at his reflection. Was that not what he had been hoping for? Every time he had heard her and Al together, every time Al had left her apartment right after having sex with her, had he not been thinking to himself that if it were him in that man’s place, he would not be so hasty to leave her side?</p><p>But he had imagined a Rosemary warm and comforting, a Rosemary, who, despite her occasional prickles, was as open and cheerful as the Rosemary who always flirted with him had seemed to be. And as much as he wanted to pretend that this woman was that Rosemary, he knew now that it was all a show.</p><p>He shut his eyes and sighed, then used the toilet, washed his hands, set his glasses aside for a moment so that he could splash cold water over his face. He had hoped to find the cold water bracing, but it mostly just left him feeling damp and even more awkward than he had already been.</p><p>As Karl left the bathroom again, dropping his shoes in the entryway this time, he glanced at the front door to her apartment and noticed that Rosemary must have opened all the locks for him while he was in the bathroom. He even considered running for a brief moment, but he was not so much of a coward that he could not face Rosemary over a cup of coffee in her apartment, was he?</p><p>No, of course not.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rosemary waited by the coffeemaker, her back to the doorway into the kitchen, giving Dr. Kelley every possible opportunity to run away, hoping that he would take it.</p><p>And hoping all the same that he would stay.</p><p>She shouldn’t be encouraging this, not in him and not in her, but damn if it hadn’t been nice the past two nights to have the sound of another person breathing next to her in bed, to be less alone in this apartment of hers.</p><p>There, Rosemary admitted it, if only to herself. She was lonely. Seeing Al once every two or three months when he could make time for her really wasn’t enough. But she hadn’t expected to like this so much, the strange domesticity that she and Dr. Kelley had fallen into almost without thinking last night. And she definitely hadn’t expected to like sharing her bed all night with another person, but here she was, having enjoyed it a great deal.</p><p>There was the soft pad of socks on the linoleum of the kitchen floor, and Dr. Kelley cleared his throat. Rosemary poured him a mug of coffee without looking his direction and refilled her own, and turned and brought them over to the table, where Dr. Kelley was standing awkwardly.</p><p>“Sit. Relax. Drink coffee. It’s a Saturday, after all.”</p><p>“Thank you,” he said, his voice still stiff and overly cautious, as if he was unsure about how to negotiate the current situation. Rosemary hid her smile in a sip from her mug, equal parts amused and empathetic. After all, it wasn’t as if she knew any better what she was doing. It had been decades since she’d last slept all night in the same bed as another person, and that person she hadn’t been having sex with.</p><p>It forced a strange sort of intimacy, sleeping in the same bed.</p><p>Work. Talking about work would provide them both with some much-needed distance from last night. “Who’s on rat duty this morning? Aditi or Tomas?” Rosemary asked, holding her mug in both hands, barely registering the warmth of it.</p><p>Dr. Kelley stared down at his mug with a frown. “I am not certain.” There. His voice was less stiff, at least.</p><p>“I think it’s Aditi, but I know she asked for a weekend off this month and for the life of me I can’t remember which weekend it was.” Rosemary took another sip of her coffee. “I’ll swing by once I’m out of here and make sure this morning’s samples got taken care of.”</p><p>Dr. Kelley glanced up at her, meeting her eye… and then blushing quite expressively. His gaze snapped back to his coffee cup. “I will take care of it.”</p><p>Rosemary glared. “Do I need to have the ‘appropriate tasks for people with doctorates’ talk with you again?”</p><p>Dr. Kelley shot a glare of his own her way. “We have spoken about moving Decima research to space. Will I have lab assistant there, to do all dirty work? Or will I and my doctorates be keeping things clean and taking samples?”</p><p>Rosemary shrugged. “It really depends on where you are, but yes, most crews will have at least one or two members who are well-versed in the gruntwork of keeping a lab running.”</p><p>Dr. Kelley opened his mouth as if to respond, then sighed and shook his head, picking up his mug and taking a sip of his own coffee.</p><p>“What?” asked Rosemary.</p><p>“You are a truly infuriating woman,” Dr. Kelley muttered. “Always an answer for everything.”</p><p>Rosemary laughed. “Being infuriating is part of the job description.” She took a contemplative sip of her own coffee, then added, “Well, at least when you work for William Carter.”</p><p>Dr. Kelley let out a sharp bark of laughter, and just like that, what remained of the tension and stiffness between them evaporated. They finished their coffee in a companionable sort of silence, and when they were done, Rosemary took Dr. Kelley’s mug and rinsed it as he shoved his shoes on.</p><p>“Thank you for coffee,” he said, pausing for a moment at her front door as she bustled out of the kitchen, on her way to the bathroom for a final touch-up of her lipstick. “And thank you for offer to look in on lab rats.”</p><p>“You’re welcome,” Rosemary said, trying to keep the smile that had forced its way onto her face in the territory of the smoothly neutral, and suspecting that she was failing horribly. Or at least, Dr. Kelley’s reaction to the smile on her face was to give her a long, intent look, and for just a moment she thought he might bend over and kiss her cheek.</p><p>But instead he shook his head and gave her a thin little smile in return, the corners of his mouth just quirking up, and he left her apartment. A few moments later Rosemary heard his keys in the lock of his own apartment, breaking the stillness that had seized her when she’d thought he was about to bend down and kiss her cheek.</p><p>“Well. There’s that,” she said out loud to herself. “Two nights. You can give yourself two nights. But that’s enough, Rosemary.”</p><p>After all, she was used to being lonely.</p><p> </p><p>By the time Karl made it to the lab complex, the samples were drawn and the cages were cleaned, though whoever had done it had forgotten to initial the report. Still, he thought he recognized Rosemary’s round, sprawling handwriting in the numbers, and it made him smile.</p><p>It made him want to seek her out, when normally he would not see her again until Monday. But no, no, that would not do. He did not want her getting sick of the sight of him, after all. Not when he hoped he might be able to convince her to let him spend another night in her bed.</p><p>So instead he examined slides, inspected fecal matter, checked the condition of the rats. Two more had died overnight, bringing the casualties of this strain of Decima to eight, though the condition of the remaining twelve seemed to be holding steady. Of course, despite the presence of Decima in the blood samples, there was no sign of mutation, no sign that the retrovirus was making progress. Karl sighed and set the last slide aside. Well. He had hoped to lower the virulence of this batch, but perhaps he had gone a bit too far in the wrong direction.</p><p>Karl spent the rest of the morning hunched over a notepad, occasionally moving around the lab to check available cell cultures, to dig out notes on previous strains of Decima and what samples remained. It felt like he was starting all over again. By the time he hauled himself off to the cafeteria for lunch, he was sore from his lack of good posture and frustrated by his lack of progress.</p><p>He had hoped that a break from work and the walk to the cafeteria would get his mind working, but the weather was hot and muggy, so he was both soaked in sweat and irritable instead by the time he returned to his lab. He tossed aside his Decima notes and instead picked up one of the side projects that Rosemary had given him a few weeks before: a certain fungal growth that he had set growing in one of the incubators in his lab, which needed to be tested for various properties. But no, the fungal growth had gone to spore at some point, and he would need to start the growth cycle all over again. After, of course, removing the spores from the incubator and sterilizing it.</p><p>Well. Might as well take care of that himself. No point in waiting for a lab tech to take care of it.</p><p>Scouring the growth chamber clean filled Karl with a certain savage pleasure, but it did not help his mood. As the day had gone on, as he had grown more and more frustrated with nothing working quite as it should, his mind had drifted more and more often towards thoughts of Rosemary. After all, it was not hard at all for him to redirect frustration with Decima and with the disastrous mess the fungal growth had caused into a different sort of frustration altogether, especially when he knew exactly how to make that particular type of frustration go away. And there was no chance that he was going to pass up a chance to relieve some of this frustration… that was, of course, if he could convince Rosemary to let him into her apartment tonight.</p><p>When he knocked on her apartment door that night, Rosemary opened it with an irritable “Twice was fine, Dr. Kelley, but three times is a habit.”</p><p>Karl simply looked her up and down, a hot, searing look, and said “Ah, but I so wanted to taste you again, suka.”</p><p>He had not expected it to work, not really, but Rosemary’s mouth fell open and she blushed so hard it was visible, even against the warm brown of her skin. Then she simply stepped backwards into her apartment, and he stalked in after her, a predatory smile on his face as he locked up behind himself and followed her further into the apartment.</p><p>He felt vicious as he undressed her, flinging her clothing to the floor and following it quickly with his own. And then he pressed her down to the surface of her bed, parted her thighs, and licked her hot and salty, teasing and sucking on her clit until she came with a whimper against his mouth.</p><p>If he had no other power over this woman, he had this one: the power to make her come so hard she forgot how to form words. All she was capable of when he sheathed himself in a condom and then in her was a needy little whimper and half-spoken, incoherent words that he interpreted how he pleased, hearing in them “more” and “harder” and “faster.” If she meant something else by them, well, at least she did not seem to mind how he chose to take them.</p><p>Neither of them remembered to eat dinner. They were so exhausted that neither of them had the energy to do more than collapse on her bed and fall asleep after they cleaned themselves up, and as they had the last two nights, they kept cautiously to the edges of the mattress as they slept, keeping as much empty space between their bodies as possible.</p><p>All the same, Karl could not help but feel triumphant as he dozed off. He might never conquer this woman’s heart, but he knew now that her body was a completely different matter. In this, she was his.</p><p>What else mattered?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They woke up starving, and while Rosemary showered, Karl raided her fridge and came up with the ingredients for a pair of quite passable omelettes. Though at that point, he suspected both of them would have eaten anything placed in front of them.</p><p>They ate breakfast together, stiff and uncomfortable with one another once again, and then went their separate ways, off to Sunday routines of cleaning, laundry, what little rest and relaxation they could fit in around the work in the lab that still needed to be done. Or at least he did; he had no idea what her idea of rest and relaxation looked like. Perhaps she spent most of her day over in the lab complex as well, doing more filing.</p><p>Halfway through the afternoon, they met in passing in the laundry room in the basement of the apartment building, him with a basket of mixed clothing, her with an armload of blouses, and both pretended they were merely indifferent acquaintances.</p><p>Maybe they were.</p><p>Of course, that had not stopped Karl from wanting to throw his basket of clothing aside so he could press Rosemary into the wall of the laundry room and kiss her senseless, an urge he definitely did not give in to; after all, she had not once kissed him on the mouth, even after three nights together. This did, however, present him with the rather intriguing prospect of trying to kiss her senseless without kissing her on the lips. He whiled away far too much of his afternoon with a fantasy about how that might go. Drop his basket of clothing there, on top of a washer, and swing her around against the basement wall right there, where the double-high dryers would hide them from immediate view if someone else came along; unbutton that prim little blouse she was wearing and kiss his way down into her cleavage; drop to his knees in front of her and pay his respects to the warm brown flesh of her thigh, with its intriguing network of stretch marks. And from there... well, if what he had imagined so far was not enough to send her senseless, he would just have to get up between her thighs and see whether that would do the trick.</p><p>That night, when he returned from a final check on the lab rats, he found himself wanting to go straight to Rosemary’s apartment and play out some of those fantasies, if she would let him. But he hesitated, remembering her comment from the night before about habits, and went to his own apartment instead. He ate dinner alone—a frozen meal heated in the microwave—and could not bring himself to do much more than pick at it. It was somehow both bland and over-salted at once, and he thought he would be happy to eat anything else, even one of Rosemary’s terrible casseroles. And from the smell that had been wafting down the hallway when he had returned to the apartment complex, he suspected one would be on offer if he chose to knock on her door.</p><p>Before he had quite realized what he was doing, he scraped the remains of the meal into his kitchen trash and left his apartment for the one next door.</p><p>Rosemary opened her door at his knock as if she had been anticipating him. He would suspect that she really <em>was</em> waiting on his knocks if she had not been so prickly with him, so hasty to tell him not to make a habit of spending his time in her bed. But she <em>did</em> open the door to him, and for now he would consider the fact that she wanted him more than she wanted to chase him away a triumph.</p><p>“Oh, good. I’ve made entirely too much food for myself,” she said, her face falsely bright. “You can help me eat it.”</p><p>He almost laughed at that, at how transparent an excuse it was to get him in her apartment, but instead he just smiled thinly and said “I suppose I am hungry enough to tolerate your terrible cooking,” and followed her inside.</p><p> </p><p>Rosemary had always been an indifferent cook. Her mother hadn’t passed on what few skills she possessed in that area, as that would have meant actually paying attention to her daughter beyond telling her to be a good, quiet girl and behave, so by the time Rosemary had been thrust into adulthood she still hadn’t been entirely certain how to boil an egg, let alone make a proper meal. Her repertoire, limited as it was, had been pieced together over time from recipes off the backs of cans and packets, and even she had to admit that it was uniformly dreadful. She knew most of it was only edible if one was truly desperate for a home-cooked meal. So she didn’t take offense when Dr. Kelley called it terrible.</p><p>Of course, that didn’t mean that she wasn’t willing to tease him about it. “Well, I’m not so sure I’m willing to share with someone who thinks my tuna casserole is <em>terrible</em>.”</p><p>He gave her what was clearly his best impression of someone who was pathetic and starving. As he was about as skinny as a twig, with ribs she knew she could count without effort if she lifted up his shirt, it was a remarkably good impression. “Forgot to eat lunch,” he said mournfully.</p><p>She rolled her eyes at that. Truly pathetic, and strangely irresistible. “Well, come on then,” she said, ushering him into her kitchen.</p><p>He politely ignored the fact that there were already two plates waiting on the counter. She had pulled two down without thinking overmuch about it, and had been on the verge of putting the second back when Dr. Kelley’s knock had sounded on her door. And then it had been too late to hide that evidence that she had been expecting him, that she had actually been <em>hoping</em> that he would show up and disrupt the carefully ordered routine of her evening.</p><p>He was polite as they ate, too, talking briefly and impersonally about work, eating mediocre tuna casserole with peas with every sign of enjoyment. There was something infuriating about how calm he was when she was finding it so difficult to stay sensible in his presence, when her mind kept slipping to the way he’d gone down on her the other night, right here in her kitchen, in this very chair.</p><p>So maybe it was no surprise that, when he finished rinsing their dishes and turned back to her with a heated look in his eye, she dragged him off to her bedroom before he could suggest it.</p><p>Dr. Kelley—no, Karl, it was obscene to pretend to polite forms of address when she had him in her bed and had every intention of fucking him senseless—seemed to have learned by now not to try kissing her on the mouth. Unfortunately, he also seemed to have decided to take that as a challenge tonight, undressing her slowly once her bedroom door was closed behind them, hunting down every soft and sensitive spot on the front of her body and and using lips and tongue and teeth to tease her until she was writhing and gasping under him. And then he coaxed her over onto her stomach and began again, starting with a line of kisses down her spine that left her shivering. Every time she reached for him, he pressed her hand back to the bed along with a growled “Not yet, suka,” that left her just as weak and shivery as his kisses were.</p><p>Finally, finally he let her roll onto her side and reach for him, but all she had the presence of mind for was to pull him close and press soft, yearning kisses to his shoulder, his neck, the glorious sweep of one of his prominent cheekbones. And then, there they were, face-to-face, his breath warm against her lips, and oh, she tried.</p><p>But after a long, quiet moment where Rosemary couldn’t quite bring herself to move that fraction of an inch closer, Karl nodded and went to the drawer of her bedside table for a condom instead.</p><p>She hated him a little bit for this, hated that he made her want to kiss him properly, when she’d been doing just fine without for so long. Hated that he accepted without question that she was the one who would have to take that step, when it would have been so easy to just yield to him if he insisted. And then she could have hated him properly, would have what she needed to shove him out of her mind and out of her bed. But this goddamn consideration… no. She had no tools in her arsenal for dealing with this.</p><p>He pulled her over him, but still did most of the work, thrusting up against her, working a hand down between them to help her on her way to her own orgasm. And then, just when it was almost too much for her to still have him inside, he let out a strangled cry and pulled her close against him, burying his face against her neck as he shuddered under her.</p><p>Rosemary let him hold her tonight, the way he had tried to that first morning. His fingers stroked gently down her spine and she shut her eyes, and for a short while she was completely relaxed, in a way she hadn’t been for a very long time.</p><p>That night, when she came back to her bed and found Karl already asleep—or at least pretending to be—on the far side of it, she gave in to the urge to slide a little closer to him. Just close enough to tuck her cold feet close to his calves, where the heat of his body had warmed the blankets.</p>
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<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rosemary made coffee for them both the next morning, and they sat in silence as they drank it, preparing themselves mentally for the week ahead. Karl finished his coffee quickly and left her apartment for his own, leaving her behind without a word, the air between them thick and awkward, an inauspicious start to his Monday. A shower and fresh clothing left him feeling almost adequate to face the day; breakfast and another cup of coffee at the cafeteria did the rest. It was a struggle at first, but somehow he avoided thinking about Rosemary again until she stormed into his lab, irritable and sarcastic, at two-thirty in the afternoon.</p><p>“You are late for your check-in, Dr. Kelley,” she said, glaring at him. “And worse than that, you left your lab phone off the hook. I do make allowances for your forgetfulness, but this is the third week in a row. Do I need to set an alarm?”</p><p>He looked up from his work, startled. He had almost forgotten this Rosemary existed after the past few nights spent in her bed. He had forgotten their meeting, too; he’d had a sudden brainstorm about the issues with the current strain of Decima early that morning, and had not even remembered to eat lunch, spending his day buried in the notes on past trials that were, even now, spread haphazardly across the table in front of him.</p><p>His stomach chose to punctuate the silence after her scolding with a loud growl. Rosemary let out an exasperated sigh and rubbed two fingers against her temple.</p><p>“Honestly, you are hopeless,” she muttered, glancing around the controlled chaos that always typified his lab when he had a particularly productive streak of ideas and then back at him. “Did you forget about the stash of granola bars I put in here again?”</p><p>He nodded, shame-faced, and she went over to one of the storage cabinets in his lab, rooting around for a moment before emerging with a granola bar in hand. She tossed it at his head, clearly still annoyed with him. Her aim was remarkably good, and it was only quick thinking on his part that stopped the granola bar from taking out his glasses.</p><p>“Eat,” she said, glaring at him again. “And then you’re going to finish wrangling whatever caused all this—” she gestured expressively at the mess in his lab “—and then you are going to come to my office for your check-in, and if I’m not there, you’ll just have to be the one to wait for me, hm?”</p><p>He nodded again, already ripping in to the package of the granola bar, suddenly starving. Rosemary rolled her eyes and then stalked out of his lab, obviously in high dudgeon.</p><p>Of course, Rosemary in high dudgeon was quite a remarkable sight to watch from behind, and he enjoyed the view for the few moments it took her to exit his lab and for him to finish his granola bar. Enjoyed it far more than he usually did, too, now that he knew what lay beneath those brightly-colored suits she wore like armor.</p><p>By the time he finally finished sorting through his notes and made it down to Rosemary’s office, it was empty except for her assistant, Charles, who told Karl in an officious tone that Miss Epps was helping put out a fire over in one of the other labs, and no, Charles didn’t know for sure whether it was a metaphorical fire or an literal one, but that wasn’t any of Dr. Kelley’s business, now was it?</p><p>Karl sighed, and sat in one of the guest chairs at Rosemary’s desk. He wouldn’t have put it beyond her to manufacture a crisis just to make him wait, a way of punishing him for his forgetfulness earlier in the day. Charles finished whatever small task he had been working on and left Karl in the office, leaving door open behind him. And then, Karl waited.</p><p>And waited.</p><p>And waited.</p><p>After half an hour, he started to wish he had brought another one of the granola bars with him. Just then, Rosemary bustled in and around him to go sit at her desk, and he forgot his hunger at the sight of her.</p><p>“Well,” she said, in her bitchiest and most corporate tone of voice as she sat down and pulled a folder out of her desk drawer, “Shall we finally get on with it?”</p><p>She seemed to be displeased with everything they covered in that day’s meeting. Despite all that, all of her complaints and critical comments about his work were fair, damn her, especially after the incident with the fungal growth. He wondered, briefly, if she was being extra harsh to make sure he continued to hate her, but when he unburied his memories of previous meetings with her from under the haze of fulfilled lust that had so recently blotted them out, he had to admit that no, this was just how she had always been. Tough, and occasionally a bit of a bitch, but fair. It only stung the way it did because he had let their personal relationship, such as it was, cloud his ability to approach things in a logical manner where she was concerned.</p><p>At the end of the meeting, he offered up the results of the morning’s research as a sacrificial lamb, handing over a pile of hastily scribbled notes and pieces of old reports that time and perspective had made clear the promise of. She sighed and took them, flipping through with a frown on her face. “You’re right. It looks like you’ve got a good foundation for where to take things next, but I think it needs a day or two more to percolate. Work on something else for a bit. You’re weeks overdue with the report on those bacterial cultures that came back from Janus station, aren’t you?”</p><p>“Yes,” he admitted, shamefaced.</p><p>“Well. Hop to it, then.”</p><p>By the time he got back to his lab, his head was so full of the changes he needed to make to his current side projects that his memory of being hungry did not resurface until well after ten that night. The campus cafeteria had closed more than an hour ago, and while another of those granola bars helped dull the edge of his hunger, he was ravenous enough that he knew he needed to eat something a little more substantial. But he thought he could not face another bland frozen meal either. As dreadful as the casserole Rosemary had served him last night had been, he found himself thinking of the leftovers with a bit of longing.</p><p>Better not to consider what else he might be thinking about with longing. It was clear that all that waited for him down that path was heartbreak, and he was not going to give himself any encouragement on that score.</p><p>When he got back to the apartment complex, Rosemary’s living room window was still lit up from within. He stiffened his spine and walked past his own apartment to knock on Rosemary’s door with the sort of caution usually only found in people facing down a wild beast that was certain to attack if approached in the wrong way.</p><p>But Rosemary <em>did</em> open the door for him, even if she let out an irritated huff when she realized who it was. “You didn’t make it to the cafeteria in time to eat real food, did you?” she snapped, glaring up at him. “Well, I suppose I had better feed you.”</p><p>She fed him.</p><p>And afterwards, he made sure she was very, very aware of how grateful he was for the meal.</p><p> </p><p>Rosemary was beginning to think that this man had some sort of oral fetish. Tonight, Karl set about coaxing her into an orgasm with a worshipful air, his hands stroking soft up her legs until she parted them for him, his lips pressing hot to her inner thighs and stomach until she begged him to do <em>something</em>, <em>anything</em>, she would do whatever he wanted if he would just touch her in that place all of his teasing caresses stopped just short of reaching. And then he buried his face in her cunt, sending her over the edge with lips and tongue and the barest hint of teeth, a delicate nibble that drove her wild.</p><p>He let her finish him off with a blowjob tonight, and she didn’t even bother with a condom this time. She had wanted to taste him, all of him, had wanted it so much that when she lifted her head from his cock and found him staring intently at her, she had almost kissed him.</p><p>But she hadn’t.</p><p>After a moment he reached up and wiped his fingers from her chin to the corner of her mouth, and put his fingertips in his own mouth to suck them clean. Clearly her attempts to swallow everything down hadn’t been entirely successful… and just as clearly, he didn’t mind at all.</p><p>Standing up was a bitch, though. Her knees didn’t work as well as they used to, and while she wasn’t exactly sedentary, the last time she’d spent this many nights in a row fucking someone had been sometime in her twenties, and right now, she was <em>sore.</em> Karl seemed to understand; he offered her a hand up and practically hauled her to her feet, an impressive feat for such a skinny little stick of a man. And then, when she had offered him her arm, he took it with a rueful smile on his face and let her haul him up off the bed.</p><p>She let him stumble off to the bathroom first, keeping to the unconscious routine they seemed to have fallen into. Unfortunately, she made the mistake of leaning against the bed, which meant he had to haul her back to her feet again when he got back to the bedroom. Of course, that might have had more to do with the fact that she’d already been considering bedtime when he had shown up; by now, she was dead on her feet, and her only thought when she got back to her bedroom after cleaning herself up was to fall into bed and pass out as quickly as possible.</p><p>Or at least it was easy to tell herself that was the reason why she didn’t kick Karl out of her apartment when she found him pretending to sleep on the far side of her bed. Easy to tell herself that the reason she cuddled close to him was because he was warm and her feet were always cold, easy to tell herself that the reason she drifted off to sleep almost immediately was because she was exhausted and not because she slept better with him in her bed.</p><p>And maybe if she kept pretending any of this was easy at all, it would be.</p>
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<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Chapter 14</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Karl woke up in the middle of the night to find that Rosemary had shifted closer to him in her sleep. Her back was to him, but she had tucked her feet—her surprisingly cold feet, for all they must had been under the covers for hours by this point—up against his legs. He smiled and rolled onto his side, curling up behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist and nuzzling against the back of her neck.</p><p>He had spent the past few nights expecting that she would kick him out of her apartment after they were done, but some part of him had grown used to the sound of her whispery little snore next to him in bed over the few short nights they had spent together, and he was not ready to give it up. He had even resorted to subterfuge to stay in her bed; after all, she did not seem willing to kick him out if he fell asleep before she finished cleaning herself up in the bathroom, and if he could not manage to fall asleep in that time… well, he had gotten very good at faking it over the past few nights.</p><p>The warmth of Rosemary’s body tucked against his chest lulled Karl back to sleep within minutes, and he did not wake again until she shifted against him and lifted his arm carefully from her midsection. He clung to her for a moment, almost without thinking, and pressed a needy little kiss to the back of her neck.</p><p>“Not enough time.” Rosemary’s voice was raspy with sleep. “Not if we want coffee, at least,” she added, glancing over her shoulder at him.</p><p>“You are much more appealing at the moment than coffee is,” Karl growled.</p><p>“Try saying that once the caffeine headache sets in.”</p><p>He pressed another needy kiss to her shoulder. “I will bring you coffee from cafeteria.”</p><p>“Tempting, but no.” Rosemary lifted his hand from her side again, then slid off the bed. “I’ve got an end of month check-in with Carter today. Can’t go into that unprepared and under-caffeinated.”</p><p>Karl grabbed his glasses off Rosemary’s bedside table and sat up, propping himself up against the wall at the head of her bed. He found it surprisingly soothing to watch her bustle around the bedroom as she went about her start of day routine, even if she was ignoring him completely. Perhaps it was the fact that it was so very domestic a scene, or perhaps it was because the novelty of seeing Rosemary without her armor had not yet worn off.</p><p>She pulled a fresh blouse out of the closet and inspected several suits before deciding on a rather sedate—at least for her—navy blue one. Of course, this was Rosemary, so the sedate suit was joined a moment later by a rather shocking ascot patterned in lime green and teal and matching accessories. And then she disappeared from the bedroom, probably heading towards the bathroom, not once during this entire process looking back at him.</p><p>Karl sighed and dragged himself out of bed, reluctant to leave but suspecting that what had just happened had been a dismissal of sorts. He gathered up his clothing and got dressed, heading for the door, planning to put a pot of coffee on to brew in his own apartment while he showered. But as he undid the chain on the front door of Rosemary’s apartment, she poked her head out of the bathroom.</p><p>“Come back here for coffee?” she asked. There was the slightest crease between her eyebrows, a bare touch of anxiety in her voice.</p><p>Karl suppressed the wide smile that wanted to take over his face. “Of course.”</p><p> </p><p>Mr. Carter set aside the last of the end-of-month reports that Rosemary had brought to their meeting—now thickly scrawled with notes on their discussion of its contents—with a hm of satisfaction. “You do always keep things ticking along like clockwork, my dear.”</p><p>“That is what you pay me for, sir,” Rosemary said in a dry tone.</p><p>“Indeed. Though you may want to keep a closer eye on Kelley and Gao. It sounds like you’ve had trouble getting work from them in a timely manner.”</p><p>“I think I’ve got Kelley in hand,” Rosemary said, feeling the irony of the phrasing keenly and hoping that her face wasn’t giving anything away. After all, Dr. Kelley <em>had</em> finally gotten her the overdue report on those bacterial cultures that morning, and she had taken the opportunity to remind him about a few other little projects with looming deadlines. Carter didn’t need to know that the sentence could have easily had a double meaning. “But Dr. Gao…” Rosemary sighed. “She might need one of your little talks, sir.”</p><p>“Well. How unfortunate. I’ll see if I can schedule her in before the end of the year. You said you had some other matters you wanted to discuss?”</p><p>“Some files from earlier this year that should probably head Adriane’s way. I just want to double-check my instincts, if you have a moment to look them over.” Rosemary handed the file folder over, and Carter opened it, flipping through.</p><p>“Asking permission to archive these projects for good?”</p><p>“And making sure none are so secure they belong in the Black.”</p><p>Carter scanned the list she’d provided at the front of the folder. “Is this one folder everything?”</p><p>“Everything important, but there are a few things on that list that I haven’t bothered with because I’ll need file boxes to move them out. The highlighted ones.”</p><p>Carter picked up his absurdly fancy fountain pen—honestly, what was the <em>point </em>of all that gold plating? It didn’t make the damn thing any better at writing—and made a few notes on the list. “Consult Adriane on these. We may have duplicates, given the overlap with Engineering.” He shut the folder and handed it back. “Otherwise, archive away, though do discuss clearance levels with Adriane when you bring them in. She makes such a fuss when you lot accidentally leave high-clearance materials with her assistants.”</p><p>Rosemary suppressed a sigh and smiled blandly at Carter. She always made sure the high-clearance stuff went directly to Adriane. It wasn’t Rosemary’s fault that most of the other lab managers were so terrified of the woman that they didn’t dare ask Adriane to do her job. “Yes, sir. Will that be all?”</p><p>“Oh, yes. And <em>do</em> enjoy your trip to the archives.”</p><p>Rosemary suppressed a real smile at that. The rest of the company might be terrified by the woman, but she had always liked Adriane, prickles and all. “I always do.”</p><p> </p><p>Adriane frowned down at the stack of file boxes that Rosemary had just wheeled into her office on a dolly. “You must be joking.”</p><p>“Afraid not. I’ll give you a hand, though; I know where everything starts and ends and I can give you a rundown of the basics of each project, if that will help. I’ve got nothing pressing for the next hour or so, either, so I’m all yours until then.”</p><p>Adriane gave Rosemary a sharp look. “You said you met with Carter earlier today?”</p><p>Rosemary had opened the top box and was scanning the files it contained. “Yeah, why?” she responded absentmindedly, flicking through a few of them.</p><p>“Because usually after a meeting with Carter you are intent on spreading the misery around, not on being helpful.”</p><p>Rosemary looked up, her eyebrows raised in surprise. “Am I?”</p><p>“You would normally abandon me to these boxes.”</p><p>“Well, you’re normally such a curmudgeon that you’d deserve it,” Rosemary said, turning back to the files. “This lot are all low-priority and can just be chucked on a shelf or whatever it is you lot do back there. Shall I hand them off to Florence?”</p><p>“Please.”</p><p>Rosemary hefted the box off the pile and Adriane came around her desk to inspect the rest of them. Rosemary being who she was, the boxes already had fairly complete content lists taped to the top, but Adriane had to admit that Rosemary’s expertise with explaining scientific research for the layperson would come in handy for sorting the papers. The only science Adriane was well-versed in involved computers.</p><p>“Right. Florence groaned and slumped over her desk, so I think that’s her set for the next hour or two. Shall we get on with these?”</p><p>The two of them dealt swiftly with the contents of the remaining file boxes, moving them to a corner of Adriane’s office for further processing once the contents of a box were explained. Florence got another half-box of materials along the way, and another pile were set aside for shredding… and Rosemary continued to be far more cheerful than she had any right to be after an end-of-month meeting with William Carter.</p><p>Rosemary caught Adriane staring at her with a frown as they were finishing up. “What?”</p><p>“Have you had good news?”</p><p>Rosemary frowned. “Why do you ask?”</p><p>“You would normally have done your best to make my life more difficult today, Rosmarin.”</p><p>“I just… had a good weekend.” Rosemary looked uncomfortable all of a sudden, and then shrugged. “Al came by on Thanksgiving.”</p><p>Adriane’s frown smoothed itself out. Perhaps that could explain it. Al had been on several long-term covert missions over the past year; Rosemary wasn’t the only person at Goddard who had been missing that man’s presence. “I see. He came just to see you, then?”</p><p>Rosemary smiled and relaxed. “A flying visit, he called it.”</p><p>No. The body language was all wrong; Rosemary was <em>too</em> relieved that Adriane had latched on to that explanation. It must be something else, then. But if Rosemary felt like being cagey about it, Adriane was not going to push her. After all, Rosemary would tell her all about it, in the end.</p><p>She always did.</p><p>“Give him my thanks the next time you see him,” Adriane said instead.</p><p>“Will do. Now, time for me to get back to the lab before there’s an uprising against my despotic rule. Bis später, Liebchen.”</p><p>“Bis später, Rosmarin.”</p><p> </p><p>There was a knock on Rosemary’s door as she pulled her plate of leftover casserole out of the microwave, and she smiled and put the second plate she’d prepared into the microwave before going to answer her door. As expected, it was Dr. Kelley. “Anything good at the cafeteria tonight?”</p><p>He shook his head and gave her a pitiful look. “I am starving.”</p><p>Rosemary suppressed a laugh. “Well, come on in. I’ve still got leftovers. Not that they’re any better than what you’d get in the cafeteria.”</p><p>He followed her to the kitchen and pulled silverware out as she moved the plates of re-heated tuna casserole to the table. It really was much worse than the cafeteria served most nights, but Dr. Kelley ate it with every sign of enjoyment, or at least no obvious signs of disgust. And then, as he had every other time they’d eaten together, he did her dishes, including the casserole dish they had just finished off. Rosemary would be eating food from the cafeteria for the rest of the week—after all, who had the time or energy to cook after a twelve hour day?—but it had been worth it.</p><p>After he finished the dishes, Karl came up behind her chair and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, bending down to kiss her neck. Rosemary had removed her jacket and ascot when she’d returned to the apartment building, had undone the top couple of buttons of her blouse, but this was apparently insufficient for Karl, because he immediately undid two more buttons. She couldn’t see him, but she suspected he was peering over her shoulder and down her shirt.</p><p>He pressed another hot, needy kiss to the side of her neck. “Shall we go to bed now, suka?”</p><p>“You know, I can’t help but think that you’ve forgotten to hate me,” she said conversationally.</p><p>“Nonsense,” he growled. “You are a thundering bitch of a woman. I dislike you most intensely. It is simply your body”—he punctuated the word by sliding a hand down the front of her shirt and into the cup of her bra—“that I find appealing.” He bit down hard on the back of her neck, sending a shiver down her spine. “Come now. Let me take you to bed and fuck you senseless.”</p><p>Rosemary snorted, but she slid off her chair and followed him to the bedroom.</p><p>Tonight, she took back the control she had so often ceded to him over the past few nights they’d spent together, grabbing one of his wrists and holding it over his head as she rode him. His eyes went wide and his breath seized in his throat, but he did not struggle against her. So she restrained the other hand as well, and he went frantic, straining and bucking up against her but not once protesting her hold on his wrists.</p><p>At least it was quick. As frantic as she had been to get him between her thighs, she wasn’t any less sore tonight than she had been the night before. And Karl’s orgasm seemed to take more out of him than it usually did, though whether that was due to some soreness of his own or just because he had enjoyed being restrained, she didn’t know. Either way, he went limp and sated under her, shuddering and letting out little gasps of breath as she pulled herself off him.</p><p>“That was…” he began in an overwhelmed murmur. She nestled against his side, waiting for him to continue, not ready to leave him yet. He seemed to be trying to find the right words, but instead all he could do was shake his head and sigh.</p><p>“You liked that?” she prompted.</p><p>He nodded, his cheeks flushed dark. A moment later he extracted himself carefully from her arms and made his way to her bathroom.</p><p>When Rosemary returned from the bathroom herself, Karl was sprawled across half the bed. And for all she knew it was a bad idea, she slid over close to him, tucked her head against his shoulder, and wrapped an arm around his chest before drifting off to sleep herself.</p>
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<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Chapter 15</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next morning, as they sat over their coffee in her kitchen, Rosemary kept looking Karl’s way with a contemplative expression on her face. She had rested an elbow on the table and her chin in her hand, and every once in a while she rubbed her thumb over her lower lip, as if considering something.</p><p>Karl thought he should probably worry about whatever was causing her to look at him this way, but that gesture kept distracting him. He had accepted by now that she was not going to kiss him on the mouth, but her lips were still a temptation, one that drew the eye.</p><p>“Is something wrong, suka?” he asked.</p><p>Rosemary shook her head, looking as if she had just been from a stupor. “No, just thinking over today’s schedule.”</p><p>Karl could not tell if that was a lie or not.</p><p>That night, he almost did not go to her. But then he considered his empty bed, the warm space Rosemary always left at his side when she invariably got up before him, and knew that until she turned him away, he would come back to her again and again.</p><p>“I’ve got cheese and crackers for dinner, but that’s about it,” Rosemary said when she answered the door, her chin lifted defiantly, as if a single complaint would have her turning him away.</p><p>“Will most likely be better than your casserole.”</p><p>Rosemary rolled her eyes, but stepped backwards and let him in her apartment.</p><p>Karl came up behind her as she pulled cheese and summer sausage out of her fridge, wrapping his arms around her so that he could unbutton her suit jacket. She let out a sigh of exasperation and shoved his hands off her.</p><p>“Can’t you even wait until after dinner?”</p><p>“You will be more comfortable if we get rid of your jacket.” Karl slid his hands down the curve of her lower back next and smiled when she shivered under his touch.</p><p>“Fine.” Rosemary threw the items down on the counter, no sign of that shiver present in her voice. “You’re in charge of cutting things up. I’m going to go change into my robe.” She whirled around him and made her way out of the kitchen.</p><p>Karl considered following her, but he was a little too hungry to consider going without dinner. He had forgotten lunch—though he <em>had</em> eaten two of the granola bars Rosemary had stashed in his lab when he had realized his hunger—but if he did not eat dinner, he would be ravenous tomorrow morning… and if he followed Rosemary into her bedroom while she stripped out of the day’s clothing, he would definitely forget to eat dinner. So instead he poked around her kitchen, finding a cutting board and knife, arranging slices of cheese and sausage on a plate, and eventually locating a box of rather stale crackers in one of the lower cabinets.</p><p>He heard the faucet running in the bathroom for a few minutes, and then Rosemary joined him again, wrapped up in that oversized terrycloth robe that somehow managed to be incredibly tempting when wrapped around Rosemary’s body. Her face was washed clean and her wig was removed, and she looked remarkably vulnerable… and remarkably tempting.</p><p>It took a great deal of willpower to say “Come eat your supper, suka,” instead of dragging her back to her bedroom immediately.</p><p> </p><p>Rosemary paused in the doorway to her kitchen for a long moment. God, the way Karl looked at her—even now, even when she was in a ratty old robe, even without the makeup and hair and all the trappings that smoothed out her appearance into something almost acceptable for society…</p><p>How could he look at her like that? How could he seem to mean it?</p><p>He’d placed two plates on the center of the little round table in her kitchen, one loaded with cheese and sausage, one with a pile of crackers. It really wasn’t much of a dinner, but it was slightly more dinner-like than just eating a protein bar or two, or even, god forbid, having ramen. Not that there was anything wrong with ramen, especially when she added some extra seasonings and a packet of frozen vegetables, but her stomach no longer handled such fare as well as it had when she was younger.</p><p>Rosemary was far too old to still be eating like a college student, but sometimes working at Goddard didn’t leave her time for anything else. But at least cheese and crackers felt as if she were eating like the sort of college student who had <em>dignity</em>. And she didn’t like to admit it, but Karl’s company made the whole thing just a little more tolerable than it normally was.</p><p>“Long day?” he asked as she hopped up on her chair.</p><p>“Mm. I was down in Pryce’s lair most of the day,” Rosemary said, loading a cracker up and stuffing it in her mouth. She was starving.</p><p>“Was wondering. You normally drop by on Wednesdays to check progress.” Karl snagged a few pieces of cheese—a small chunk of cheddar and a slice of the really nice Swiss they’d randomly had in the campus store last week—and ate them in quick succession. He seemed to be as ravenous as she was.</p><p>Or perhaps he just wanted to get through the preliminaries quickly. Given what she had planned tonight, Rosemary certainly did. The conversation ground to a halt as they focused on eating their way through the contents of the plates as quickly as possible.</p><p>When both plates were empty, Karl asked solicitously, “Would you care for more?”</p><p>Rosemary shook her head. “I’ve got plans for the rest of the evening.”</p><p>One of Karl’s eyebrows rose curiously. “Ah, you have plans? That is new.”</p><p>“Oh?”</p><p>“This entire thing has seemed entirely unplanned, suka. Be careful. You might give me hope for a future.” His voice was light and teasing, but Rosemary thought that perhaps there was some real feeling behind the words.</p><p>Rosemary snorted and rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say they were plans with <em>you</em>.”</p><p>Karl's skinny little chest puffed up at that, and he looked about ready to fight someone. “I see. Well, I should just—“</p><p>Rosemary cut him off before he got so far up on his dignity that he decided to leave. “A joke, darling. How about you go see what’s waiting in my bedroom for you?”</p><p> </p><p>Karl walked in to Rosemary’s bedroom to find she’d attached restraints to her bed. They were padded and black and made of leather, and clearly and meant to hold a person’s wrists and legs spread-eagle on the bed, and all he could do at the sight of them was to stand there with his jaw hanging open.</p><p>He hardly registered the click as she shut her bedroom door behind them.</p><p>Rosemary’s arms wrapped around him from behind and started undoing the buttons of his shirt, lingering over each one. “They’re for you,” she purred against his neck. She finished with his shirt buttons and ground her hips against him from behind, a move that took him from mildly aroused to rock-hard in a moment. Her hand found his erection, stroking it through his trousers.</p><p>“I am not… oh blyad, suka, how can I trust you like this?”</p><p>“You can trust me,” she said, pressing a kiss to the back of his shoulder. He could feel the smile on her lips.</p><p>He let her tie him up.</p><p>And the danger of it, the worry that this woman was not quite safe enough to be trusted, turned what might have simply been a pleasurable encounter into something transcendental.</p>
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<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Chapter 16</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next morning, Karl was the one staring at Rosemary, his eyes wary as he watched her calmly sip her coffee and make a list on a piece of scrap paper of things that needed to happen that day.</p><p>What might he let her do to him if he actually could trust her? He did not know.</p><p>He was starting to wonder now, though.</p><p>She came by his lab for a brief check-in that afternoon, asking how the second attempt at the fungal growth was going, checking in on the progress he had made on the new approach he had been considering for Decima, offering her usual insightful questions and commentary on both. And though she did not mention a single thing about the night before, his entire body screamed with awareness at her presence.</p><p>After she left his lab, all he could do was sit and stare into space for more minutes than he cared to admit. Eventually, he came back to himself and cursed.</p><p>She was right to keep insisting that he find reasons to hate her. Because if he did not, he would have to admit that it would be all to easy to love her instead.</p><p> </p><p><em>A week</em>, Rosemary told herself. <em>A week is long enough.</em></p><p>She didn’t know who she was kidding, trying to tell herself that, because a week wasn’t nearly long enough. She’d been attracted to Dr. Kelley—to Karl—since the moment she’d finally met him face-to-face. And she had been interested in him for a long time before then, ever since Viktor Stukov had first mentioned Dmitri Vologin and his retrovirus research initiative, especially after the initial background check they’d run on Vologin had come back.</p><p><em>You can take the girl out of the microbiology department, but you can’t take the microbiologist out of the girl</em>, Rosemary’s brain supplied, a rather odd mangling of a saying that seemed strangely apt at the current moment. Of course she’d been interested. It was her area of expertise, the subject area that kept sucking her in again and again, and she hadn’t had a microbiologist or virologist in her department in more than ten years.</p><p>It had been good, the past twenty-odd months, to have someone she could toss all the annoying micro research projects she’d been saving up at someone, to see if her theories about how they’d turn out were correct, when she didn’t have the confidence to consider doing them herself. And it had been good to see how Decima had progressed, even if Dr. Kelley seemed to feel it wasn’t progressing nearly quickly enough.</p><p>And for the past week, it had been good to have him in her bed each night, warm and snoring at her side.</p><p>But Rosemary didn’t have time for good, and even if she did… well, someone like her didn’t deserve it. So it was time to put a stop to it.</p><p>Her thoughts were still running along those lines when Karl finally knocked on her door that night. She wouldn’t answer. <em>This is a bad habit</em>, she told herself. It was a habit, and habits could be broken, habits needed to be broken, especially ones that interfered with her productivity.</p><p>Not that this one was interfering. Not yet. But soon, it might, and she needed to stop before it got to that point.</p><p>He knocked a second time, more hesitant, and then she heard the sound of his footsteps moving away from the door. And before she’d had a chance to even react to what her body was doing, she was at her door in a rush, flinging it open, making some half-hearted excuse about having dozed off on the couch.</p><p>Karl looked as if he hadn’t bought that excuse, but he didn’t comment on it, and when she stepped back and opened her door wider for him he was through it in an instant, flinging it shut behind him and leaning down to press a kiss to the pulse point on her neck, right below her ear.</p><p>That night he was tender with her, careful, as if he’d suddenly realized how fragile this entire thing was.</p><p> </p><p>Karl did not believe Rosemary when she said she had dozed off on the couch, but he wasn’t inclined to push on that score. Not when she was warm and soft in his arms, not when she was tilting her head to one side to give him better access to her neck, not when her arms went around his waist and pulled him close against her body. She let out a whispery little sigh as he nuzzled her neck gently, then pressed another kiss to it.</p><p>“Did you already eat dinner?” Her tone was distracted.</p><p>“Yes,” Karl said. It was not much of a lie; after all, he had finally gotten to a midday meal around four, after she had left his lab that afternoon. After he had finished staring into space, trying to remind himself that despite the fact that she was incredibly attractive, she had a dreadful personality. Trying to remind himself that she must be the one who reported everything he did to Mr. Carter, that she was so good at hiding her true feelings that who knew what she might be thinking. “Did you eat?”</p><p>“Yes, I ate.” Rosemary said, and a slight skip of hesitation in her words left him wondering what, if anything, that evening meal had consisted of.</p><p>But now that he had her, he was impatient, so instead he took her down the hall to her bedroom. She was still wearing her skirt and blouse, still in her wig, “wearing her hair,” as she liked to put it. He reached up and brushed the tall bangs of the wig away from her forehead, then leaned down and pressed a kiss to it. “Take your wig off and come to bed, suka,” he said, leaning down to whisper against her ear. <em>Let me make love to you,</em> Karl wanted to say, but he suspected that if he did say that, he would find himself back outside her apartment door in an instant.</p><p>Rosemary went silently over to her chest of drawers, looking in the mirror perched on it as she carefully removed her wig, as she removed the wig cap beneath. As she took care of her hair, Karl stripped swiftly out of his own clothing, then crossed the room to her. He undid the hook and eye on her skirt and unzipped it, letting it fall to the ground, where Rosemary stepped out of it. He reached around her and started on the buttons of her blouse next, undoing them slowly, nuzzling and kissing the back of her neck as he did. When Rosemary settled her wig on its stand, he slid the blouse off her arms, undid her bra, helped her out of the rest of her undergarments. And then, for a moment, he wrapped his arms around her from behind and held her against his body and imagined that the reflection in the mirror—of a man holding a woman close and careful, as if she were something previous to him—was the reality of the situation.</p><p>But instead they had whatever it was between them, this lust that was still burning strong after a week together, this strange spark of attraction. Nothing precious here.</p><p>Still, he could not help taking that strange, tender feeling to the bed with him, could not help being gentle and careful with Rosemary tonight.</p><p>And although he knew she could work him into a frenzy if she chose, she let him.</p><p> </p><p>Rosemary found herself on the verge of tears that night when she came back to bed and found Karl there once more, curled up and pretending to sleep on what she had already started thinking of as his side of the bed. She wanted to yell at him for that, for the fact that he had invaded her orderly life and made nonsense of it, and all that in just a week. She wanted to rage at him for treating her like she was something precious, something worth protecting, when no one else had ever felt the need to protect her before.</p><p>Not even her own goddamn parents had done that.</p><p>But she knew he wouldn’t deserve it, and she knew that if he left her bed would be cold. And maybe it made her a coward to fold so easily to such minor considerations, but if so? She’d be a coward.</p><p>One with warm feet.</p>
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<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Chapter 17</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Karl left the lab a bit early that afternoon, wandering over to the campus store and browsing its limited selection of groceries. He would have to figure out a way to get off of Goddard’s campus to a real grocery store tomorrow or Sunday, he decided, but for now he gathered up crackers and a selection of fancy cheeses, wondering as he did—and not for the first time, either—why the campus store had multiple kinds of fancy cheese but almost no fresh vegetables and only one kind of bread. No wonder Rosemary always resorted to particularly awful casseroles; they were easy to make from pre-packaged food. </p><p>He laid in wait in his apartment until he heard the clatter of Rosemary’s keys in her lock, then he waited just a little bit longer. Perhaps he was hoping, just a little, that if he waited long enough she would come to him.</p><p>But he knew that holding out hope for such a thing was nonsense, so he went to her door instead, holding his purchases in front of him like an offering to a particularly tempestuous goddess. </p><p>Rosemary opened the door with a very peculiar expression on her face, as if she were trying to hold a smile in check. And she was managing it, almost, but despite the fact that her mouth did not move at all when she saw him, her eyes almost seemed to glow with delight.</p><p>“You’ve gone shopping,” she said, looking down at the bag he was holding.</p><p>Karl nodded. “Nothing exciting. But at least these crackers are not stale,” he said, holding the bag up. “And there is an onion and a tomato as well.”</p><p>Rosemary laughed. “Staving off the scurvy, one vegetable at a time, I see.” She stepped back and let him into her apartment.</p><p>“Am not certain this tomato will do the job either, given the state of it. But neither of us eat as well as we should, so it is better than nothing.” Karl followed her into the kitchen and pulled Rosemary’s cutting board out of the cabinet it lived in.</p><p>Rosemary sighed. “I know. I suppose I could afford to order in something exciting every night, and god knows most of the restaurants downtown will do orders for Goddard up until midnight, but by the time my day is over…”</p><p>“You are too tired to decide what you want, let alone to order it.”</p><p>The corners of Rosemary’s mouth twitched upwards, then she wrestled her face back under control. “Something like that.”</p><p>Karl washed the tomato and pulled the skin off the onion, then set them on the cutting board, along with the cheese he had purchased. “Do you still have sausage?”</p><p>Rosemary nodded and pulled the remains of the summer sausage from a few nights before out of the fridge. “Anything else?”</p><p>Karl shook his head. “Go change into your robe. I will take care of supper.”</p><p>Rosemary gave him a long, steady look, then nodded again and disappeared from the kitchen.</p><p> </p><p>Rosemary shut her bedroom door behind her and slumped back against it, trying to shove down the panicked sob that was sitting in her lungs, trying to escape. Why the hell did he have to be so damn kind?</p><p>This would be easier if he weren’t kind. A man like that, a man who had lived the life he’d lived, should have had all the kindness beaten out of him long ago, shouldn’t have any left to give to her.</p><p>She bit the inside of her lower lip hard, tasted the coppery bloom of blood, and it was enough; she was able to straighten up, to go find her robe, get undressed, remove her wig, go to the bathroom and wash her makeup off. And then she stood there in the bathroom for a long, quiet moment, looking herself in the mirror.</p><p><em>Well, Rosemary</em>, she told herself, <em>time to bring an end to it. Time to remind him that you’re a bitch and chase him off.</em></p><p><em>After dinner, though,</em> she added. After all, she was hungry.</p><p> </p><p>Rosemary seemed to have gained control of her smile while she had been out of the kitchen, Karl noticed. She caught his eye and gave him another of those long, steady looks.</p><p>“Why are you here?” she asked, a little frown between her eyebrows.</p><p>Karl gestured at the plates he’d arranged on her kitchen table. “Dinner.”</p><p>The frown deepened for a moment, and then smoothed out. “You could have had dinner on your own. So why are you here?”</p><p>Karl looked her over slowly, taking in the robe, her bare face, the thin fuzz of hair on her scalp. “I thought that the reason would be obvious, suka. I have not yet tired of playing with you,” he growled.</p><p>And it was the truth, almost. But the truth was also that he had craved her attention almost since the first moment he had met her. He had always enjoyed those little stolen moments they sometimes had in his lab, when she would let her guard down and joke with him, tease him, flirt with him, even if that flirting meant nothing, in the end.</p><p>But her breath caught when he growled at her, and her eyes widened, and it was enough to know she lusted after him, even if there was nothing more there. Even if he… no. <em>Do not think about it</em>, he told himself. It would not do to think about the way he wanted so much more than she was willing to offer him, because he would be disappointed.</p><p>Rosemary handed him a cracker just then, with a slice of brie and a piece of summer sausage and a thin sliver of onion all balanced precariously on it. He took it with a murmur of thanks, and both of them dug into the meal with abandon.</p><p>“You’re sleeping in your own bed tonight,” Rosemary said sharply to him once the plates were empty. “No more of this faking being asleep to stay where you are.”</p><p>Karl did his best to suppress his startled reaction as he gathered up the plates. He had not realized she had noticed him faking. “Oh? What makes you think that I have been faking?” he asked, trying to keep his tone light and teasing.</p><p>He had apparently failed to hide his surprise. Rosemary quirked one dangerous eyebrow up, an action that was almost a scold, coming from her.“You snore when you’re asleep.”</p><p>“I do not!” he protested, turning his back on her to take the plates to the sink... and to hide the very real smile that had crept on to his face for no reason he could discern. She was trying to get rid of him. There was no reason for him to be smiling like that.</p><p>“Then what have I been listening to at night through my bedroom wall for the past two years, a thunderstorm?” She scoffed. “You snore. Loudly. Must be that impressive schnoz of yours.”</p><p>A sputter of laughter burst out of him the same way that smile had. Karl glanced over his shoulder at her as he washed the plates. “Schnoz? The English language truly is peculiar.”</p><p>“Oh, come on, that one’s Germanic in origin, you can’t make fun of me for that one.” Rosemary sounded more than a little bit indignant. “It’s not my fault English has pillaged every language that stood still long enough for it to get a good grip.”</p><p>“You prove my point. Languages do not pillage. I can only assume you are being deliberately ridiculous.”</p><p>Rosemary laughed, a laugh of genuine amusement that set his heart thumping in his chest in a most peculiar manner. “Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean the English language doesn’t go pillaging.”</p><p>“And how would you know what pillaging looks like, hm? You are not viking.” He rinsed the last plate and turned to look at her properly. The smile she had been trying so hard to suppress earlier in the evening had come back, lighting up her face.</p><p>“And what would you know about pillaging yourself?”</p><p>“Let me show you,” he growled.</p><p> </p><p>Rosemary found she couldn't quite catch her breath as Karl swept her off to her bedroom. She hadn’t meant to let him get to her bedroom at all, and had gone into dinner with every intention of kicking him out after they finished eating, but somehow, some way, she couldn’t quite resist the way this man looked at her.</p><p><em>Might as well enjoy some dessert before he goes, I suppose</em>, she found herself thinking, a justification that would have been an extremely poor one even if she hadn’t already been so sore from the past week and a half. She hoped that being pillaged wouldn’t be a particularly athletic venture; her knees were already threatening to give out on her.</p><p>He almost tossed her into her bedroom in front of him, and then stalked in after her, pausing just long enough to shut the door deliberately behind them both. Rosemary knew she had no call to be frightened of this man, but there was a pleasant little thrill of fear to the the situation all the same. She turned to face him and started to reach for him, but he took her by the wrists and held her hands away from his body as he backed her slowly and deliberately towards the bed in a way that made it clear that he was aware of her almost-fear and planning to exploit it.</p><p>God, he was still fully clothed and here she was, in just her robe, a robe that had come a little loose while she’d been sitting at the dinner table and which was now on the verge of falling open. “Let me undress you,” she said, desperately wanting at least that much control over this encounter without having to wrest it forcibly from him.</p><p>Karl shook his head, and growled a low denial to her request.</p><p>Rosemary swallowed, hard. And then the backs of her thighs hit the edge of the bed and he crowded in very close against her, forcing her thighs apart. He opened the front of her robe and looked down at her, his gaze fixed and lustful.</p><p>“Now, suka, I will show you what pillaging looks like.”</p><p>He had apparently learned quite a lot about what bits of her body were most sensitive over the past week, because he proceeded to drive her senseless, perched there on the edge of her bed, her robe still on her shoulders but covering nothing at all. He was relentless; if she showed any sign of having enough presence of mind to try touching him, to try to get his clothing off, he would switch to some new spot that had her gasping and moaning and, eventually, falling back against the bed, her legs still dangling bonelessly over the edge. Eventually, that turned into him kneeling on the floor next to her bed, his face buried between her thighs.</p><p>When finally, finally, she felt herself clench around the fingers he’d inserted in her, felt her back arch off the bed involuntarily, she felt well and truly pillaged.</p><p>Karl gentled her through her orgasm, then kissed his way up her stomach, coming to rest with his chin between her breasts. His expression as he stared up at her was almost adoring.</p><p>“Your turn?” Rosemary asked in a weak, breathless voice.</p><p>He shook his head. “No. It is late. Time for me to return to my own bed.”</p><p>A small sob wrenched its way out of her, along with a single word.</p><p>“Stay,” she begged him.</p><p>His eyes lit up.</p><p>He stayed.</p>
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<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Chapter 18</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Karl knew he was behind on work, on all those little projects Rosemary threw his way, knew he needed to spend his Saturday in the lab.</p><p>But the last of the most recent batch of rats had passed away the day before and he was no closer to figuring out what had gone wrong with this version of Decima. Had the feeling that if he kept throwing himself at this problem, he would be well and truly blocked, and that he would benefit from forcing himself to take a break.</p><p>So instead of heading in to the lab, he threw caution to the wind, decided he could take one Saturday off, and called a taxi, meeting it at the gates of the Goddard complex. He took it downtown to the largest grocery store and purchased all the things he had wanted to find in the on-campus store, but couldn’t. Beets, cabbage, parsnips, an assortment of other stew vegetables, beef bones for broth, spices, vinegar, sour cream… Rosemary had complained once that borscht tasted like sour dirt, but he thought, with the right incentive, she might change her mind.</p><p>It took him the rest of the day, working from a half-remembered recipe, first making the broth, then moving on to the soup itself, but finally the concoction simmering on his stove smelled and tasted right. It tasted like childhood, and like home, and he hoped she would like it too.</p><p>He heard her keys in the lock of her door, far earlier than she usually returned to the apartment complex, and dashed to his own door, opening it and calling her name.</p><p>“Rosemary!”</p><p>Rosemary popped her head back out her open door. “Hm? Oh! Something smells good.”</p><p>“Leave door open, I am coming over with dinner.”</p><p>She gave him a curious look, but left her door ajar and disappeared inside. He went back to his kitchen, putting a lid on the pot and settling the container of sour cream on top, scooping the entire thing up with oven mitts and carefully negotiating his way out the door of his own apartment and into hers, setting the pot down on the center of her kitchen table, then returning to his own apartment to shut and lock the door. When he returned, Rosemary looked up guiltily; she had already opened the pot and had obviously just eaten a spoonful of borscht straight from it.</p><p>Karl laughed at the expression on her face.</p><p>“What is this?” she asked, scooping up another spoonful. “I love it.”</p><p>“Borscht.”</p><p>The look of horror on her face made Karl laugh again.</p><p>Rosemary had gotten down bowls while he had been doing a final check of his apartment, so he ladled borscht out for her, spooned sour cream on top, was even so ridiculous as to offer to feed her a spoonful of the food he had made for her from the bowl he had prepared. That got him a sharp look, but she took the offered spoonful anyway, and closed her eyes in contentment as she swallowed.</p><p>She finished two bowls, and laughed ruefully when she was done. “You certainly are a much better cook than I am,” she said, smiling at him.</p><p>Karl shrugged. “It is hard to cook good food in time you have for cooking.”</p><p>“Well. My complements to the chef.” Her smile had turned sultry, and she was looking him up and down. “Now, what do you say about dessert?”</p><p>“Give me time to put away leftovers, you insatiable woman.” And to figure out what they could possibly do that would not end up with one or the other of them throwing their back out.</p><p>“Oh, very well,” she said, a low murmur that shivered down his spine and made him wonder if he would actually <em>mind</em> throwing his back out if it that was what it took to make her orgasm so hard she screamed again.</p><p> </p><p>Rosemary had tried to convince herself that she was coming back to the apartment complex early that day so that she could catch up on her reading. As lies went, it wasn’t a terrible one; Adriane got her copies of every major journal relevant to the work done in her labs, and several of the minor ones as well, and it took most of her outside-of-work hours to keep up with it all. And she hadn’t been, lately.</p><p>But the truth was that she had come back home early because she’d wondered why Dr. Kelley hadn’t been in his lab all day. She had considered calling his apartment to find out—and to make certain he hadn’t fallen ill—but, well, Saturday hours weren’t technically a requirement of the job, and the man had spent every damn Saturday—and more than a fair share of Sundays, too, at least when he had an infection cycle to observe—in the lab since he’d arrived at Goddard.</p><p>She <em>had</em> been a little surprised to find out that he’d been cooking. <em>Cooking for me,</em> her mind supplied, but she shoved the thought down. No one had ever cooked for her, or at least not since she’d still lived with her parents; there was no call to think that someone had cooked for her now. Clearly he had just been feeling nostalgic for what was obviously a treasured childhood dish, that was all. It was sheer coincidence that he had decided to share it with her.</p><p>Karl turned to her and she plastered a bright, fake smile on her face.</p><p>“Well, now that that’s done,” she chirped, “did you provide dessert as well, or am I going to have to… <em>scavenge</em>?” She let her eyes drift up and down the length of his body with that last word, and he exhaled sharply.</p><p>“Am afraid you will have to find own dessert,” he said, “but I have idea or two about where to start looking.”</p><p>“Is that so?”</p><p>“Perhaps you would like to give pillaging a try.”</p><p>“Mmm. The things I could do with a captive…” Rosemary dropped her voice into the raspy purr that Karl seemed to like, and he let out another sharp little breath.</p><p>“Please, suka.”</p><p>She took him to her bed and tied him to it, and somewhere along the way the smile on her face became a real one.</p>
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<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Chapter 19</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Over coffee that morning, Karl gave into his curiosity and asked Rosemary what she did with her Sundays. “More filing?”</p><p>“No, I usually catch up on my reading,” she said. “Well, you’ve seen the morass in the living room. Part of my job is making sure I’m on top of currently published research.” She sipped her coffee thoughtfully. “Then there’s laundry. Dishes, too.” Her eyes darted over to the sink, where Karl had already washed the bowls they’d used last night. “Though that one is… less of a concern lately. Thank you for that, by the way. You don’t have to.”</p><p>Karl finished off his own coffee, suddenly a little self-conscious. “Well. You feed me most nights. And we both use your dishes.” He stood, and went over to the sink to rinse his mug out. “I will see you tonight for the rest of the borscht?”</p><p>Rosemary eyed the fridge. “Honestly, you’d better take the leftovers with you if you want to eat them tonight, otherwise there might not be anything left.” She looked up at the ceiling with an exasperated expression. “If you’d told me even two days ago that I’d find borscht irresistible…”</p><p>Karl’s mouth twitched into a smile at that. “Perhaps it is not the borscht you find irresistible,” he said.</p><p>Rosemary opened her mouth as if to respond, then sighed instead, looking him up and down, her expression rueful. “You might be right there,” she muttered, so quietly that he was not sure that was what she had actually said, or just what he wanted her to say.</p><p> </p><p>Rosemary sat at her kitchen table for a long time after Karl had left. No, Dr. Kelley. When he wasn’t in her bed, she should keep that distance between them. It was important to.</p><p>Though more and more these days, she found herself hard-pressed to remember why it was so important.</p><p>She laughed a little at herself and finished off the dregs of her coffee, which had gone stone-cold. God, she was getting maudlin in her old age. Maudlin and melodramatic. And there certainly wasn’t any time for that sort of nonsense in her life, not when she had five research scientists to hound and a mound of paperwork to keep on top of. Oh, and papers to read. Always more papers to read.</p><p>Not today, though, at least not right away. Today, Rosemary needed to take the suits she’d worn more than twice out for dry-cleaning. She knew that she could always send them out, get a member of security to take them down to the dry-cleaners for her, but like with so many other things she preferred the personal touch. After all, she had spent a lot of money on clothing that fit over the years, and she wasn’t going to leave its care and keeping to chance.</p><p>And Nadia, the woman who always worked weekends at Rosemary’s favored dry cleaner, always <em>did</em> seem to enjoy telling Rosemary all about her grandchildren.</p><p>“And will you be heading off to Detroit this Christmas, Rosemary?”</p><p>Rosemary blinked in surprise and put down the photo of Nadia’s youngest with her three. “Goodness, no. You know how it is up there at Goddard, one day off and then nose back to the grindstone.”</p><p>“Huh.” Nadia finished tagging the last of Rosemary’s suits. “Thought you might have been, with you so cheery.”</p><p>Rosemary stifled a rush of panic. It had come out years ago that Rosemary had grandchildren of her own and that the familial relationship was almost nonexistent, and Nadia seemed to have made it her life’s work to try and convince Rosemary to heal the breach. Not that Nadia had any idea why things were so fraught, of course, and not that Rosemary could ever find the words to explain it. How <em>did </em>one tell a woman who’d married for love, who had a family she adored, that Rosemary couldn’t bear to know the child of the married man who had ruined her life?</p><p>Not that Julio knew anything about his real father; as far as he was aware, it was Ric. Rosemary had always been a once-close friend who had agreed to be a womb and little more for the couple, and she didn’t think Julio had ever questioned that, though a little common sense would have told the boy that handing a baby over to a gay couple would have been a lot more complicated in the 50s. But he had grown up with two fathers, with Ric and Jamie, and had seemingly never interrogated his past further.</p><p>Julio had still tried to reach out to her, had wanted to know his birth mother. He’d sent her invitations, him and Ric both, to his graduations, to his wedding, to the christenings of his daughters. In another couple of years, Rosemary thought she’d probably get an invitation to her eldest granddaughter’s Quinceanera, and wouldn’t that be a hell of a thing to have to turn down.</p><p>Rosamaria and Abigaíl. They’d even named the damn girls after her.</p><p>At least Jamie had known better than to try and invite her to things. He’d understood why she had to face it all on her own time, and why her own time might be never. He didn’t go so far as to discourage Ric and Julio, but he never joined in on the pressure they put on her.</p><p>Nadia was still looking at her expectantly.</p><p>“It was a good week in the lab,” Rosemary said, shoving a fake smile onto her face. “People got things done, thank goodness.”</p><p>Nadia looked a little disappointed, but shrugged. “You’ll be back for these next weekend?”</p><p>Rosemary smiled properly. “Thanks, Nadia, you’re a doll.”</p><p> </p><p>Karl returned to Rosemary’s apartment that night with the leftovers. He had purchased potatoes the day before, and spent the afternoon doing what he would have done yesterday if Rosemary had returned home at her usual late hour, grating them up and seasoning, frying up a plate of little brown potato pancakes to go with their dinner.</p><p>Rosemary met this offering with a raised eyebrow and a smile. “A man of many talents, I see. It really is quite unfair, Dr. Kelley.”</p><p>“Karl,” he corrected, and her smile broadened.</p><p>“Karl, then. You are quite unfairly competent.”</p><p>Karl shrugged. “Cooking is not so different from running an experiment.”</p><p>“Well, I never did have the patience for lab work,” said Rosemary, her smile turning a little sad.</p><p>Karl thought that was probably nonsense—the damn woman’s theoretical basis for the work he did put his own to shame—but didn’t correct her. Instead, he dished up the food, and had Rosemary try the borscht cold.</p><p>Rosemary still seemed a little melancholy over the meal, and Karl expected her to ask him to leave after it was done.</p><p>But instead, when he went to gather up the dishes to wash them, Rosemary put a stilling hand on his arm. “Come to bed with me,” she said, her voice low and quiet. “I’ll get the pot back to you when it’s clean.”</p><p>“Very well.”</p><p>There was something desperate about Rosemary that night. She did not wait to see if her body would cooperate, but instead went straight for the lube. The sex they had was fast and frantic, even as they both strained muscles that were nearly taxed to their limit.</p><p>He finished before her. But when he moved to touch her, to give her a climax of her own, she pushed his hands away.</p><p>Instead, she clung tight to him afterwards for a very, very long time.</p>
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<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Chapter 20</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I will bring supper over tonight,” Karl said over their morning coffee.</p><p>Rosemary frowned. She really ought to be discouraging him from this habit of eating meals with her; it was much too close to having a real relationship with the man, and that was something she definitely didn’t have time for. “I don’t know…”</p><p>“More potato pancakes. Sour cream. Applesauce.”</p><p>Well, the potato pancakes had been good. “All right.”</p><p>Karl finished his coffee, then went to rinse his mug. “Will see you at check-in today,” he said over the sound of the running water. “Will not be late again.”</p><p>Rosemary snorted. “I should hope not. You’ve got a bit of a disaster on your hands with this latest Decima strain, and you still haven’t finalized your plan for where to go next.” She had hoped that forcing him to work on something else for a while would help, but as far as she knew, he wasn’t any further along than he’d been at their check-in last week.</p><p>Karl put his mug in the drying rack and turned, sighing as he did so, running an anxious hand over his bald head.“Wish I knew what went wrong.”</p><p>Before she’d quite realized what she was doing, Rosemary slid off her chair and crossed the room to him, taking his free hand in her own hands and squeezing it. “Hey. You’ll get there.”</p><p>He tilted his head to one side and smiled at her. “Hopefully much faster with your assistance.”</p><p>Rosemary blushed and dropped his hand, backing away, returning to her table for her coffee mug. “I just ask questions, you know. It’s something anyone with enough background on your research would be able to do. I bet Aditi and Tomas would be able to, if they weren’t so terrified of you.”</p><p>Karl laughed a little at that, and Rosemary frowned at him, confused.</p><p>“You bring… multidisciplinary approach,” Karl said, his smile wider. “It fits well with my own experience.”</p><p>“Well, you wouldn’t believe some of the weird specialists we’ve had come through here over the years. I’ve had to brush up on quite a few things I might never have touched otherwise, and that isn’t even getting into the sort of stuff Pryce gets up to in her basement…” Rosemary trailed off, blushing again, and hid her face by taking another sip of coffee. Karl had been staring at her with a silly, fond expression on his face, and it left her heart pounding hard against her ribcage.</p><p>Karl didn’t comment on her sudden silence. “I am off to shower. See you this afternoon.”</p><p>“Doh vstreycheh.”</p><p>He paused and turned to her on his way out of her kitchen, a strange look on his face. And then he smiled and shook his head and muttered something that Rosemary suspected was “Your Russian is truly terrible,” as he left the room.</p><p> </p><p>Rosemary had been strangely soft this morning, and it left Karl feeling hopeful again. He kept trying to shove the feeling down, of course. He had no doubt that later today, at their start-of-week check-in, she would be back to her corporate bitch self, and she would probably remind him that he ought to hate her when he brought supper over tonight.</p><p>But knowing that did not stop the warm glow that had spread through his chest when she had taken his hand and reassured him, when she had said her awkward little goodbye in Russian, and even after he had gotten dressed for the day, he still had a bit of a bounce in his step.</p><p>That glow faded somewhat when he joined Rosemary in her office for his start-of-week check-in and she tore into his work, every bit the corporate bitch once more.</p><p>“So,” Rosemary said, looking over Karl’s final report on the latest Decima trial. “The results of this latest batch were… not ideal.”</p><p>“Virus seems to have weakened immune system, pulmonary system.” Karl sighed. “But did not cause any mutations, wanted or otherwise.”</p><p>“Hm.” Rosemary flipped through the report. “Well. I suppose the thing to do now is get to manufacturing a new batch from an older sample, yes?”</p><p>Karl sighed again. “Yes. But…”</p><p>“But?”</p><p>“I am wondering if I have reached boundary of what I can achieve with resources available here on Earth. We have discussed space mission…”</p><p>Rosemary worried her lower lip with her teeth for a moment, and Karl’s ability to concentrate on the subject at hand disappeared. “You’re on the waiting list. More than a few of our scientists have been waiting years for a spot on a space mission to open up, you know, and you’ve only been here for a couple of years. But…”</p><p>Her teeth dug into her lower lip again. Karl wanted to throw himself across the desk and kiss her, despite the fact that he had finally accepted that she did not seem interested in kissing him.</p><p>“Better results here on earth will bump you up the list,” Rosemary was saying as she frowned across the desk at him, as her hands fiddled with a pen. “So we need to figure out how to get you better results.”</p><p>“Er,” was all Karl was capable of.</p><p>“Have you considered non-mammalian test subjects?”</p><p>“Non-mammalian?” He echoed, his attention still on her mouth, on the temptation of that red, red lipstick of hers.</p><p>“Mm. Insects. Plants.”</p><p>Karl wrenched his gaze away from Rosemary’s mouth and did his best to give the subject some real thought. “I suppose Decima could be modified to make that work, yes. But it seems like step backwards, when hope is to make retrovirus work on humans.”</p><p>“Progress first. If you can get it to work, or at least make significant progress towards the results you want to see, in something—anything—Carter’s more likely to push you to the head of the queue for outer space.” Rosemary had turned her attention back to the report on her desk, and there her teeth went again, nibbling that full lower lip of hers. “And I think I want to get you to work with Dr. Weiss for a few months on a side project or two. His background is… unconventional, and the projects he gets assigned are unconventional too. It wouldn’t hurt to stretch yourself for a bit, do something completely new.”</p><p>“Dr. Weiss is…” Karl frowned, trying to remember, trying to distract himself from Rosemary’s mouth. “Xenobiology?”</p><p>“Among other things, yes.” She uncapped the pen she was fiddling with and made a note.</p><p>“Do I have clearance for xenobiology?” Karl frowned. Dr. Weiss, as far as Karl knew, worked alone most of the time, and Rosemary was one of the few people Karl had ever seen enter the other man’s lab. Rosemary, Carter, and, just once, Pryce.</p><p>“No, but you won’t need it for the projects I’ve got in mind.”</p><p>“Very well.”</p><p>Rosemary handed the report back. “That’s all for today, I think. Keep cleaning up the side projects you’re behind on, and think some more about the non-mammalian test subjects. I can get you just about anything you’d ever want.”</p><p>Karl nodded and stood, holding the report at waist height as he did so, feeling rather self-conscious about just how very… distracted he had gotten while staring at Rosemary’s mouth. And then, as quickly as he could in his current state, he fled her office and made his way up the stairs to the seclusion of his lab.</p><p> </p><p>Rosemary stared at the door to her office, grateful that Dr. Kelley had shut it after him. She was feeling just a little flustered, and suspected she would need a minute or five to collect herself before getting back to work.</p><p>It was the way he had been staring at her, like he couldn’t keep his eyes off her, like he wanted to devour her. He had no call to be staring at her like that in a work meeting.</p><p><em>But you enjoyed it</em>, said a little voice from somewhere beyond the logical part of her mind.</p><p>And god help her, she actually had enjoyed it.</p><p> </p><p>Karl left his lab early in order to cook. Not that there was anything pressing; most of the side projects he was working on right now involved a lot of, as Rosemary had put it once, hurry up and waiting, short spurts of frantic action followed by hours where nothing much happened.</p><p>He had not heard Rosemary’s keys in her door today, but as he was finishing off the few last potato pancakes, he heard the sound of the faucet in her bathroom running. He loaded his arms up with the sour cream and the applesauce and a plate stacked high with potato pancakes.</p><p>“Come in!” Rosemary called when he knocked.</p><p>Karl fumbled awkwardly with the knob of the door and managed to get it open without dumping anything on the floor. Down the entry hall, he could see that Rosemary was curled up on the couch, wearing her robe, pen in hand and an abysmal pair of orange reading glasses perched on her nose as she read a paper.</p><p>She glanced up and threw the paper aside immediately, crossing to take the plate out of his hands. “Sorry! I’m a little behind on my reading.”</p><p>“It is all right.” Karl turned and locked her front door behind him. Rosemary had already gone into the kitchen by the time he turned around, and was separating some of the pancakes onto a second plate. “You can read while we eat, if you would like.”</p><p>Rosemary gave him a rueful look. “I’m not sure I can manage it without getting sour cream everywhere.”</p><p>“I could feed you.”</p><p>Rosemary’s eyebrows quirked up in amusement. “Could you, now. I didn’t think you were that sort.”</p><p>“What…?” He could think of only one thing she might be implying, but surely…</p><p>“Really?” One eyebrow quirked a little higher, lending a dubious cast to her expression.</p><p>“Do… do people do that? For sexual gratification?”</p><p>Rosemary seemed to be hiding a smirk. “Oh, you innocent boy.”</p><p>Karl blushed. “Well, it would not be for that reason.”</p><p>“You wouldn’t be the first sexual partner who has wanted that from me, you know.” Rosemary’s face was now a picture of impish amusement.</p><p>“I did not need to know that,” Karl said stiffly.</p><p>“In any case, it will probably be safer if I just feed myself,” Rosemary said, barely suppressed laughter in her voice. She finished separating out her own plate of potato pancakes and held up two spoons. “You’re still holding the sour cream and applesauce.”</p><p>“Right,” muttered Karl, setting the containers down on her tabletop. They scooped out sour cream and applesauce and started eating in silence.</p><p>“These are delicious, by the way,” Rosemary said a few minutes later, as she loaded sour cream and applesauce onto one of the pancakes. “Thank you.”</p><p>“You are welcome,” Karl said, and this small social courtesy seemed to break through the awkward silence of those first few minutes of the meal. “I enjoy cooking, when I can find time for it. It is not always the most efficient means of feeding myself, though. I did not often indulge when I still lived in Russia.” He paused and scooped a few loose slivers of potato up.</p><p>“Efficiency is overrated.”</p><p>“Your role is to make me more efficient, is it not?”</p><p>Rosemary shifted awkwardly. “Only in the lab.”</p><p>“Social interactions are not part of lab work,” Karl insisted, staring her down.</p><p>She met his eye and frowned. “Social interactions are an intrinsic part of lab work. If you can’t work well with others, if you can’t communicate, you’re not going to contribute to the overall efficiency of the lab, no matter how efficient you are on your own time.”</p><p>“I suppose so.” Karl studied her carefully, and she seemed to be studying him back. “Do you want me to leave after dinner, suka?”</p><p>There it was, that little gesture that indicated Rosemary was thinking, her teeth sinking into her lower lip. She released her lip and flicked her tongue across it, and Karl almost groaned.</p><p>“I don’t know,” she said finally.</p><p>“Let me stay,” he murmured.</p><p>Rosemary stared at him for a long, quiet moment. And then, she nodded.</p><p> </p><p>By now, Rosemary had stopped thinking of it in terms of a bad habit and had started to think of it as an addiction.</p><p>A strange, terrifying addiction that had hooked into her somewhere close to the heart she’d spent the past thirty-five years denying the existence of.</p><p>She could still give him up, she told herself. It wasn’t even as if she’d had him for very long. It wasn’t even as if he was hers to have.</p><p>She was just… borrowing him for a bit, she told herself. Borrowing him from his total absorption in his research, borrowing him from the gender of lover he had always preferred in the past. And in a little while, the loan would come due, and she’d return him.</p><p>But it was hard to think about returning him when he had taken her to bed after dinner and had driven her wild, bit by bit. It was hard to think about returning him when he was asleep by her side, snoring gently, when somehow over the past few nights, instead of retreating to opposite sides of the bed as they slept, they curled up together in the center of the bed together, limbs entangled.</p><p>It was hard to think about returning him when she could feel his breath warm against her neck, when she could smell him on her skin and her sheets, when she couldn’t quite remain unaffected any more when they met face-to-face during work hours.</p><p>He would never be able to tell, she assured herself. She was good enough to make sure of that. </p><p>But she could tell, and that terrified her.</p>
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<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Chapter 21</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Morning coffee together had become a routine now, the two of them sitting on either side of the small round table in Rosemary’s apartment, studiously ignoring one another as they mentally prepared for the day.</p><p>Still, Karl could not help but ask. “I will see you tonight?”</p><p>Rosemary opened her mouth, and for a moment he thought she was going to refuse him. “With more potato pancakes?”</p><p>He shook his head as he got up to rinse his mug out. “No more potatoes.”</p><p>“I’ll… I’ll get something from the cafeteria for us to eat,” Rosemary said, almost grudgingly, as if the words were being pulled out of her by force.</p><p>“Tonight, then.”</p><p>“Dr. Kelley?” Her voice called after him as he went to leave. He turned in the door to her kitchen and looked at her quizzically. “I sent a memo to Carter yesterday. About Decima,” she said steadily, a little frown between her eyebrows</p><p>Karl frowned. “That is your job, is it not?”</p><p>“I could have put it off. Waited until you had the next steps ready.” Rosemary took a sip of her coffee, looking down at the tabletop. “He may want to call you in. For a personal meeting.”</p><p>“Thank you for the warning.”</p><p>She shot him a sharp look. “It wasn’t meant to warn you about Carter.”</p><p>“No, you were hoping it would warn me off you, weren’t you?”</p><p>Rosemary bit her lower lip and looked back down at the table. “Maybe a little. You can’t trust me to have your best interests at heart, you know.”</p><p>“I know, suka.” He made as if to go again, but instinct called him back to her side, where he bent down to kiss her cheek. “I know,” he said again, in a low whisper against her ear.</p><p>“Remember that,” she whispered back, in a low, breathy voice.</p><p>“I will.”</p><p> </p><p>Rosemary shut her eyes after Karl left, her every breath shallow and sharp in her lungs. Damn the man. Damn him. Damn him for understanding, when she had been trying so hard to remind him that it wasn’t safe to like her, to want her, to be beside her.</p><p>Damn her for liking him, too. That was the real problem. That she liked <em>him</em>, and not just the sex they were having. That his fucking presence was a goddamn <em>comfort</em> to her, for Christ’s sake.</p><p>Maybe she was just getting old.</p><p>She laughed to herself. Well, that one sure was true. She’d been trying to avoid thinking about her upcoming birthday for a reason. The years did keep marching on and on, didn’t they? And those years were starting to show, whether she wanted them to or not.</p><p>She laughed again. Those years had been showing for longer than she liked to admit.</p><p>And she was more vain than she liked to admit, too. Maybe it was his regard for her that made this difficult, the fact that he almost seemed to <em>prefer</em> her when she’d stripped all her corporate armor off, the fact that all that vanity seemed to mean nothing to him. She felt exposed in his presence, exposed by that soft kiss he had pressed to her cheek, exposed by the fact that it didn’t seem to matter to him which version of her he encountered, as long as he ended up in her bed each night.</p><p>But the fact that she was feeling that way didn’t seem to stop her from wanting him there, so until she figured out how to stop being so damn weak for the man, she’d just have to bear it.</p><p> </p><p>That night, when Karl returned to Rosemary’s apartment, she called out for him to let himself in. “Dinner’s in the fridge,” she said, waving vaguely in the direction of the kitchen from where she was perched on her couch, a pair of truly appalling green reading glasses perched on her nose, clearly catching up on her reading.</p><p>Karl reheated the cafeteria meal in the microwave, then went and sat down next to her on the couch where he could peer over her shoulder as he ate. Better to look at the paper than her face—as always when she was feeling thoughtful, she nibbled on her lower lip in a way that left him jittery and obsessive. But he knew her well enough now to think that if he ever forced the issue—if he ever forced the kisses he so desperately wanted on her—she would shut him out entirely.</p><p>And he would deserve it if she did.</p><p>She reached the end and handed the paper off to him. “What do you think?”</p><p>He skimmed the first page with a frown. Even that much was scribbled with a number of virulent comments in Rosemary’s sprawling handwriting. Justly deserved ones, he thought, but harsh all the same. “You would make vicious peer reviewer.”</p><p>Rosemary looked nonplussed. “I don’t know about vicious… Anyway, not about the commentary, about the subject matter.”</p><p>“Let me finish reading.” Karl set his plate with the remains of his meal aside and settled in to read through the paper properly. “Viral progression in bacteria.”</p><p>“Mm. Of interest?”</p><p>“Perhaps. Could certainly do a better job than…” Karl flipped back to the front page. “Dr. Calavicci, et al.”</p><p>“I’ll hand that off to you, then.”</p><p>“Thank you.” Karl set the paper aside and went to wash his plate, along with Rosemary’s and the coffee cups from that morning. And then, he made a brief detour to her bedroom and that bedside drawer where she kept the condoms and lube before returning to the couch. “I am going to distract you now,” he murmured as he leaned in close, nuzzling against her cheek.</p><p>“Are you?” Rosemary’s attention was on another paper by now, no doubt taken from that teetering pile on her side table. But despite her concentration, she tilted her head to one side to allow him access to her neck.</p><p>Karl took it as an invitation to nibble softly at her. “Oh, yes,” he growled against her shoulder, before continuing to nibble and kiss his way downwards. Rosemary’s breath caught in her throat as he pushed her robe aside in order to sink his teeth into her shoulder, a poor and violent substitute for the way he wanted to kiss her, revenge for the torment of watching her nibble on her lower lip as she read, a sight he had not been able to avoid entirely.</p><p>But she did not seem to mind the pain. “That feels nice.” Her voice was low and caressing, and he thought the distraction he heard in it had a different source than it previously had. She let the paper fall into her lap and reached up to run soft fingers along the curve of his ear.</p><p>Karl returned to her neck and buried his face there, pressing a warm kiss to the tender area just below her ear… and then nipping sharply at her earlobe. “You smell nice.”</p><p>Rosemary nuzzled against his cheek. “So do you.”</p><p>The moment was sweet and tender… and couldn’t last. He heard the little rustle of Rosemary removing the paper from her lap, felt her remove her reading glasses, and then her hands were on him, sliding up under his shirt. A few minutes later, they were skin to skin and frantic for one another, her fingers rolling on the condom he had taken from her bedside table, his own busy with the lube. He finally did what he had wanted to that first night: he laid Rosemary down on the couch on top of that terrycloth robe of hers and took her hard.</p><p>She clung to him afterwards, panting, her breath warm against his neck, and he tried to accept that this was all there was between them.</p><p>But later that night, in her bed, with her head tucked against his shoulder and her snore soft against his ear, he found it impossible to pretend he felt nothing but lust where Rosemary Epps was concerned.</p>
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<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Chapter 22</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next morning, Rosemary tried to sit up in bed… and then immediately dropped back to the surface with a pained grunt. Damn. That little encounter on the couch last night had been hot as fuck—Karl had clearly been thinking about doing something of the sort quite intently for a good long while, if the fervor with which he’d set about fucking her into incoherence was any indication—but there had been a few awkward angles and her lower back was now airing a protest.</p><p>A warm hand groped for her under the sheets and found her hip. A moment later, the rest of Karl followed, fitting himself snugly against her side. He nuzzled lazily against her shoulder before pressing a warm kiss there. “All right?” he mumbled, clearly still half asleep.</p><p>“Too old for these shenanigans,” she grunted back. Her lower back was still aching, even though she’d dropped back into the position that had been remarkably comfortable before she’d started moving. “Just catching my breath. Then, ibuprofen.”</p><p>“Where do you keep it? Could fetch it for you.” His Russian accent was coming out strong in his half-asleep state, and she found it annoyingly adorable.</p><p>“Top drawer to the left of the bathroom sink.”</p><p>“Just a moment.” He pressed another kiss to her shoulder, pushed himself halfway to sitting... and then sank back against the mattress with a groan. “Several moments,” he panted.</p><p>Rosemary laughed in spite of herself, and then winced. “Teach us old people to stop pretending we’re in our twenties, huh?”</p><p>“The couch may have required too much awkward maneuvering for our current capabilities,” he admitted, somewhat ruefully. “Hold on. Am going to try and be snake.”</p><p>Another unexpected laugh burst out of her, followed by another grunt of pain. “A snake?”</p><p>The only response from Karl was a pained grunt of his own as he started wiggling towards his side of the bed. Rosemary watched, bemused, as he slithered sideways off the bed, using gravity to get himself upright. He stumbled around the bed and snagged his glasses off her bedside table before leaving the room, returning a few minutes later with a glass of water and the bottle of ibuprofen.</p><p>She took the bottle from him and fiddled in a disgruntled way with the child-safe lock until it popped open and she could shake two out into her hand. Karl offered her the glass of water and she traded off the pill bottle for it, sitting up just enough to take a swallow from the glass to chase down the pills and the offering it back to him. He did the same before setting the glass down on her bedside table next to where he’d set the pill bottle down, and then sat himself down on the side of her bed with a sigh, his back held very straight.</p><p>“Should probably just go get showered now.”</p><p>“Mm.” Rosemary reached over and patted his thigh. “But you’ll come back for coffee?”</p><p>“If I can still walk by then,” he said darkly.</p><p>Another painful crack of laughter escaped her. “This hurts enough already. Stop making me laugh. Awful man.”</p><p>He turned his head towards her, slow and stiff, and rested one of his hands over hers, where it was still pressed to his thigh. A little smile was playing at the corner of his mouth, one that went all the way to his eyes, creasing the corners of them. “I like making you laugh.”</p><p>Five words, a confession of something that was barely an intimacy, but they still pierced her to the core. Hell. She’d let him far too close, if he was thinking things like that. She tugged her hand out from under his. “Actually, forget the coffee. I’ll grab some from the cafeteria.”</p><p>Karl’s already-stiff shoulders stiffened further. “Very well.”</p><p>She took pity on him. “But you can still come by tonight, if you want.”</p><p>He sighed. “Very well,” he repeated. And then, without another word, he got up from her bed again, got dressed in yesterday’s clothing, and left her alone with her thoughts.</p><p> </p><p>Karl wanted to curse as he went about the rest of his morning routine. What had he been thinking? Rosemary had made it clear that she was not the friend he had thought her, that all she wanted him for was sex. How had he expected her to react to such a confession?</p><p>Not like that, certainly. Not to something so impersonal as the fact that he liked to make her laugh.</p><p>Except it was not so impersonal as he liked to pretend it was, was it? Because if this was just about sex, he would have tired of it by now. Would not feel forced into this frantic pace that had left him sore and aching each day since the first night he had spent in her bed, because he knew that some day soon she would close her door in his face and all he would have left was his memories. And memories would not be nearly enough, not when he had been able to hold her and touch her and <em>care</em> for her, even if the last was a private indulgence he dared not confess out loud.</p><p>He should be stronger than this. Strong enough to resist the temptation of a woman who only wanted him for his body, when he had hoped for much more. But she had become an obsession, one that made him miss the person he had been two weeks ago. That man who had considered Rosemary a friend as well as a coworker, that man who had not yet seen what lay beneath her armor, that man who had not yet seen her vulnerable and completely unwilling to let him further in. That man who had not been vigilantly watching every shift of her facial expression, trying to find some sign that this… this <em>thing</em> between them had a future beyond the next night.</p><p>He could find no such assurance. Every night was still a gamble, every night he still worried that this time, she would not let him in. Every night, this obsession grew stronger.</p><p>But for at least one more night, she let him in.</p><p>This evening, she had another meal from the cafeteria waiting for him. She sat across her tiny kitchen table while he ate, wearing her robe, reading a paper and making notes, her silence denying him any opportunity for conversation. Even after he finished the meal and the dishes, she was still silent, still had not said another word to him since letting him in to her apartment. He stayed by the sink in self-defense, studying her profile cautiously from the small distance his current vantage afforded him.</p><p>She was frowning down at the paper in front of her and scribbling furiously in the margins, her neck and shoulders held stiff and uncomfortable. And blyad, he felt weak at the sight. All he wanted to do was go to her and gather her into his arms, to rub her neck and shoulders until they released their tension, to bury his face against her skin and breathe her in. Urges that had nothing to do with the sex they had been having and everything to do with the fact that he was halfway in love with her.</p><p>
  <em>More than halfway.</em>
</p><p>He flinched away from the thought. No. <em>No</em>. He would not allow himself to dwell on it. It would only hurt that much more when she inevitably ended this.</p><p>He should leave. End it himself before this obsession grew too strong, before he could be hurt too badly by it.</p><p>Rosemary rubbed the back of her neck with her free hand, and then sighed and set her pen down so that she could press her other fist into her shoulder for a moment. She glanced his way, brief but piercing, and he felt as if she had seen straight through to the core of him and exposed his shameful need to hold her, to care for her, to love her.</p><p>She cleared her throat. “Come rub my shoulders, darling.”</p><p>He hastened to comply.</p><p> </p><p>By the time Karl was done with her neck and shoulders, Rosemary was half-collapsed against her kitchen table and aching. In a good way, at least physically. Emotionally...</p><p>She didn’t dare interrogate her emotional state. If she did, she would have to face the fact that she wanted more than sex from him, and she didn’t have <em>time</em> for that sort of nonsense. Better to keep him at a careful, cold distance. Better to glance his way and find him looking at her like she was the most terrifying woman on earth than to hope that such a glance would reveal softer feelings on his face.</p><p>Terror or lust. That was all she could abide from him. Terror or lust or hatred.</p><p>He bent over her and pressed a kiss to the back of her neck. “Be right back.”</p><p>“Hm?”</p><p>But he had already left the room. Rosemary straightened up slowly while he was gone, rolling her shoulders carefully, resenting the pained twinge in her lower back.</p><p>Karl came back in and set a bottle of lube on the table, along with a condom. Rosemary eyed both items dubiously for a moment before turning that look on him.</p><p>“It is what I am here for, is it not?”</p><p>She flinched. She had expected heat in his voice—the damn man had an erection tenting the front of his trousers, after all—but instead his voice had been cold and distant. And it hurt more than it should, to hear him so cold. She had let herself sink into a sort of warm contentment as he had rubbed her shoulders into submission, one she was only able to acknowledge and regret the loss of now that he had shattered it so thoroughly.</p><p>“Yes,” she rasped.</p><p>He fucked her in her tall kitchen chair, a swift and businesslike encounter that he didn’t even get undressed for. Even still, she found herself clinging to him afterwards, reluctant to let him go, terrified that she would come to bed and find he wasn’t there. Not that she would blame him for wanting that distance, but...</p><p>“Come lay down and I’ll return the favor,” she almost begged him, digging her fingertips into a knot in his lower back.</p><p>He studied her face for a moment, his expression very serious.</p><p>And then he nodded, and followed her to her bedroom, and let her try her best to eradicate that knot in the muscles of his back and several others she found along her way.</p><p>And after she was done, he stayed with her.</p><p><em>Just one more night</em>, she told herself. <em>One more night and I’ll have this out of my system, I swear.</em></p><p>She knew she was lying to herself. But right now? The alternative was too painful to bear.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><div class="children module" id="children">
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